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06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page i

Historical Dictionaries of Asia, Oceania,

and the Middle East
Edited by Jon Woronoff

Asia
1. Vietnam, by William J. Duiker. 1989. Out of print. See No. 27.
2. Bangladesh, 2nd ed., by Craig Baxter and Syedur Rahman. 1996. Out of
print. See No. 48.
3. Pakistan, by Shahid Javed Burki. 1991. Out of print. See No. 33.
4. Jordan, by Peter Gubser. 1991.
5. Afghanistan, by Ludwig W. Adamec. 1991. Out of print. See No. 47.
6. Laos, by Martin Stuart-Fox and Mary Kooyman. 1992. Out of print. See No. 35.
7. Singapore, by K. Mulliner and Lian The-Mulliner. 1991.
8. Israel, by Bernard Reich. 1992.
9. Indonesia, by Robert Cribb. 1992. Out of print. See No. 51.
10. Hong Kong and Macau, by Elfed Vaughan Roberts, Sum Ngai Ling, and
Peter Bradshaw. 1992.
11. Korea, by Andrew C. Nahm. 1993. Out of print. See No. 52.
12. Taiwan, by John F. Copper. 1993. Out of print. See No. 34.
13. Malaysia, by Amarjit Kaur. 1993. Out of print. See No. 36.
14. Saudi Arabia, by J. E. Peterson. 1993. Out of print. See No. 45.
15. Myanmar, by Jan Becka. 1995. Out of print. See No. 59.
16. Iran, by John H. Lorentz. 1995.
17. Yemen, by Robert D. Burrowes. 1995.
18. Thailand, by May Kyi Win and Harold Smith. 1995. Out of print.
See No. 55.
19. Mongolia, by Alan J. K. Sanders. 1996. Out of print. See No. 42.
20. India, by Surjit Mansingh. 1996. Out of print. See No. 58.
21. Gulf Arab States, by Malcolm C. Peck. 1996.
22. Syria, by David Commins. 1996. Out of print. See No. 50.
23. Palestine, by Nafez Y. Nazzal and Laila A. Nazzal. 1997.
24. Philippines, by Artemio R. Guillermo and May Kyi Win. 1997. Out of print.
See No. 54.

Oceania
1. Australia, by James C. Docherty. 1992. Out of print. See No. 32.
2. Polynesia, by Robert D. Craig. 1993. Out of print. See No. 39.
3. Guam and Micronesia, by William Wuerch and Dirk Ballendorf. 1994.
4. Papua New Guinea, by Ann Turner. 1994. Out of print. See No. 37.
5. New Zealand, by Keith Jackson and Alan McRobie. 1996. Out of print.
See No. 56.

New Combined Series

25. Brunei Darussalam, by D. S. Ranjit Singh and Jatswan S. Sidhu. 1997.
26. Sri Lanka, by S. W. R. de A. Samarasinghe and Vidyamali Samarasinghe.
1998.
06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page ii

27. Vietnam, 2nd ed., by William J. Duiker. 1998. Out of print. See No. 57.
28. People’s Republic of China: 1949–1997, by Lawrence R. Sullivan, with
the assistance of Nancy Hearst. 1998.
29. Afghanistan, 2nd ed., by Ludwig W. Adamec. 1997. Out of print.
See No. 47.
30. Lebanon, by As’ad AbuKhalil. 1998.
31. Azerbaijan, by Tadeusz Swietochowski and Brian C. Collins. 1999.
32. Australia, 2nd ed., by James C. Docherty. 1999.
33. Pakistan, 2nd ed., by Shahid Javed Burki. 1999.
34. Taiwan (Republic of China), 2nd ed., by John F. Copper. 2000.
35. Laos, 2nd ed., by Martin Stuart-Fox. 2001.
36. Malaysia, 2nd ed., by Amarjit Kaur. 2001.
37. Papua New Guinea, 2nd ed., by Ann Turner. 2001.
38. Tajikistan, by Kamoludin Abdullaev and Shahram Akbarzedeh. 2002.
39. Polynesia, 2nd ed., by Robert D. Craig. 2002.
40. North Korea, by Ilpyong J. Kim. 2003.
41. Armenia, by Rouben Paul Adalian. 2002.
42. Mongolia, 2nd ed., by Alan J. K. Sanders. 2003.
43. Cambodia, by Justin Corfield and Laura Summers. 2003.
44. Iraq, by Edmund A. Ghareeb with the assistance of Beth K. Dougherty.
2004.
45. Saudi Arabia, 2nd ed., by J. E. Peterson. 2003.
46. Nepal, by Nanda R. Shrestha and Keshav Bhattarai. 2003.
47. Afghanistan, 3rd ed., by Ludwig W. Adamec. 2003.
48. Bangladesh, 3rd ed., by Craig Baxter and Syedur Rahman. 2003.
49. Kyrgyzstan, by Rafis Abazov. 2004.
50. Syria, 2nd ed., by David Commins. 2004.
51. Indonesia, 2nd ed., by Robert Cribb and Audrey Kahin. 2004.
52. Republic of Korea, 2nd ed., by Andrew C. Nahm and James E. Hoare.
2004.
53. Turkmenistan, by Rafis Abazov. 2005.
54. Philippines, 2nd ed., by Artemio Guillermo. 2005.
55. Thailand, 2nd ed., by Harold E. Smith, Gayla S. Nieminen, and May Kyi
Win. 2005.
56. New Zealand, 2nd ed., by Keith Jackson and Alan McRobie. 2005.
57. Vietnam, 3rd ed., by Bruce Lockhart and William J. Duiker, 2006.
58. India, 2nd ed., by Surjit Mansingh, 2006.
59. Burma (Myanmar), by Donald M. Seekins, 2006.
06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page iii

Historical Dictionary of
Burma (Myanmar)

Donald M. Seekins

Historical Dictionaries of Asia, Oceania,

and the Middle East, No. 59

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford
2006
06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page iv

SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Published in the United States of America
by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.scarecrowpress.com

PO Box 317
Oxford
OX2 9RU, UK

Copyright © 2006 by Donald M. Seekins

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Seekins, Donald M.
Historical dictionary of Burma (Myanmar) / Donald M. Seekins.
p. cm.—(Historical dictionaries of Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East ; no.
59)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5476-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8108-5476-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Burma–History–Dictionaries. I. Title. II. Series: Historical dictionaries of
Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East ; 59.
DS528.34.S44 2006
959.1003–dc22 2006001432

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page v

Contents

Editor’s Foreword Jon Woronoff vii

Acknowledgments ix
Reader’s Notes xi
Old and New Place Names xv
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms xvii
Maps xx
Chronology xxiii
Introduction 1
THE DICTIONARY 49
Bibliography 487
About the Author 531

v
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Editor’s Foreword

When Burma first became independent, there were valid reasons to ex-
pect it to be a relative success in the region. It was well endowed with
natural resources, reasonably compact, and had some talented leaders
with broad public support. Yet while its neighbors are presently known
for political progress and occasionally economic “miracles,” Burma has
slipped back and become a rare laggard and even sometimes a pariah.
Politically, it is run by one of the world’s few remaining military
regimes, which stubbornly rejects any democratization that could un-
dermine its control. Economically, the situation has continued to
worsen, for the bulk of the population at least, while any wealth is mo-
nopolized by a small elite, and the greatest source of riches is drugs.
This can hardly be compensated for by superficial reforms or name
changes—from Burma to Myanmar—or promises of better times to
come. Nor can it be justified by the past, although it is somewhat easier
to understand today against the background of yesterday, a long history
marked by many problems that are yet to be resolved.
Although it is simple enough to say in an offhanded way what has
gone wrong, it is not that easy to explain it more cogently. That re-
quires countless details, without which it is difficult to make sense of
the situation. It is because of the details that this Historical Dictionary
of Burma (Myanmar) must be welcomed. It provides an exceptional
overview of the country, both today and yesterday, and also perhaps
clues about tomorrow. The dictionary section has hundreds of entries
on notable leaders throughout history, the more significant events that
shaped that history, and the groups and institutions that currently pre-
vail. Other entries look into the economy, society, culture, and religion
as well as its many different ethnic groups. This admittedly complex
situation is summed up in the introduction and also traced over the
centuries in the chronology. The bibliography points to other sources

vii
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viii • EDITOR’S FOREWORD

of information (although not as many as one would hope for), making

this volume particularly useful.
This completely new edition was written by Donald M. Seekins. Dr.
Seekins, who is currently a professor of political science at the College
of International Studies of Meio University, has spent much of his ca-
reer in Asia, especially Japan and parts of Southeast Asia. He has vis-
ited Burma frequently and has specialized in the country’s political his-
tory. Over the years he has written many papers and articles on various
aspects of the country, as well as a book on the most important feature,
namely the military regime, the aptly titled The Disorder in Order: The
Army-State in Burma since 1962. Despite his concentration on the cur-
rent and recent past, it is obvious from this historical dictionary that Dr.
Seekins is familiar with the earlier periods as well and with the many
intricacies that make Burma, despite its rather lackluster performance,
a country for which one can develop considerable affection and a hope
of better things to come.

Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page ix

Acknowledgments

Professor David I. Steinberg, Director of the Asian Studies Program at

Georgetown University, recommended me to the editor of the series as
author of a new edition of the Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myan-
mar). While preparing the volume, I received invaluable assistance
from many people inside Burma, who—given present conditions—I
cannot acknowledge by name. Professor Sean Turnell, director of the
Burma Economic Watch at Macquarie University in Australia, provided
much-needed comments on contemporary economic trends, including
the Myanmar government’s mysterious system of multiple kyat-dollar
exchange rates.
I also wish to thank my wife Reiko and son Ken for their patience
during those long days and evenings when I’ve been seated in front of
the computer, absorbed in hammering out the minutiae of historical and
contemporary Burma.
Daw May Kyi Win, who was curator of the Donn V. Hart Southeast
Asia Collection at Northern Illinois University, compiled the bibliogra-
phy, which has been revised and updated. I wish to dedicate this volume
to May Kyi Win, a most conscientious and dedicated scholar whose un-
timely passing in 2002 has been felt keenly by the Burma studies com-
munity.

ix
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06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page xi

Reader’s Notes

Although for most languages the choice of formal transliteration is a

relatively scholarly decision, perhaps also influenced by habit and pref-
erence, in the case of Burma—or Myanmar—it is much more complex.
In 1989, the Adaptation of Expressions Law promulgated by the State
Law and Order Restoration Council provided a new romanization for
geographical and ethnic group names. However, many writers, myself
included, have chosen to use the old romanization, which dates from the
British colonial era. Whether to refer to the country as “Burma” or
“Myanmar” or its major city as “Rangoon” or “Yangon,” etc., has become
a politically charged issue. Those who prefer the old names, including
Burmese dissidents living abroad, often use them to express their belief
that the post-1988 martial law government is illegitimate. My reason for
using them is different: There is no international consensus on which set
of names should be used. The governments of the United States and the
United Kingdom continue to use the old terminology, while the United
Nations and most Asian countries, including Japan, have switched to the
new one. Perhaps in the future there will be agreement on this matter
that will satisfy all parties involved. But it will most likely be a long
time in coming, given the close symbolic connection between the con-
troversy over names and the bitter and unresolved standoff between the
prodemocracy movement and the martial law regime since 1988.
It should be pointed out that many of the old names have less lin-
guistic integrity than the post-1989 ones; for example, the pronuncia-
tion in spoken Burmese of the name of a town located northeast of Ran-
goon is much closer to the post-1989 Bago than it is to the old version,
Pegu. However, the military government’s claim that the new official
country name, Myanmar, is ethnically neutral and inclusive of all the
country’s ethnic groups (roughly equivalent to the use of British to re-
fer to the peoples of the United Kingdom) is patently untrue: In the

xi
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xii • READER’S NOTES

Burmese language, both Myanmar and Burma (Myanma, Bama) refer

to the politically and numerically dominant Burman (Bamar) ethnic
group, who make up about two-thirds of the population. There is, in
fact, no ethnically neutral name to refer to the country or its inhabitants.
In this volume, the following procedure is used to manage the dis-
parity in old and new names: in the dictionary entries, the first time a
geographic or ethnic group name is used, the old version is followed by
the new version in parentheses, for example Rangoon (Yangon), Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, Karens (Kayins). Thereafter in the text
the old version is used exclusively for each dictionary entry. Some
names are the same under both the old and new systems, for example,
Mandalay, Sagaing, Chins, which is indicated by the lack of a paren-
thetic entry on first mention. There is also a table following this note in
which the old and new names are listed, so that persons familiar with
the old nomenclature can easily find the post-1989 renditions.
The entry Shan (Tai) is different in that while the initial term Shan is
used in both the old and new versions of Burmese ethnic and place
names, Tai is the term used by the Shans in their own language to refer
to themselves. Also, some Chinese terms are given first in the Wade
Giles or old romanization, followed by the pinyin romanization in
parentheses, for example, Chungking (Chongqing), Kuomintang (Guo-
mindang).
In the dictionary entries, cross-references to terms that are defined
elsewhere in the dictionary are in boldface type.
Burmese personal names are often confusing for Westerners because
there are no family names (with the exception of some ethnic minori-
ties, such as the Kachins), making it difficult if not impossible, on the
basis of name alone, to trace blood or marriage relationships between
people. Usually, a name consists of one or more (usually two or three)
syllables; the initial sound of the first syllable has traditionally been
chosen in accordance with the day on which the person was born,
though an individual may change his or her name for a variety of rea-
sons, including upon the advice of astrologers. Upon marriage, women
do not assume their husband’s name in any form. In addition, both men
and women are usually addressed by sex- and status-specific honorifics
placed before the name: for men, Maung (literally, younger brother), Ko
(elder brother), and U (uncle); for women, Ma (for a younger woman)
and Daw (aunt, for an older or married woman): thus, U Nu, Daw Aung
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READER’S NOTES • xiii

San Suu Kyi, Ma Thida. Many ethnic minorities have their own titles.
For example, a Mon woman will be addressed as Mi (the equivalent of
Daw or Ma) before her name, a Mon man as Nai (the equivalent of U).
In the entries, the honorific is not reflected in the alphabetical arrange-
ment.
Certain persons, for example, Bogyoke Aung San, have special titles,
in this case meaning literally “major general.” The term Thakin (“mas-
ter”) is often used in front of the names of persons who were involved
in the struggle for independence, for example, Thakin Mya, Thakin Ko-
daw Hmaing. Buddhist monks have their own terms of address, for ex-
ample, pongyi, sayadaw. Saya, meaning “teacher” (for women,
sayama), is often used to address not only teachers, professors, or
physicians but also adult persons who because of their skill or experi-
ence are deemed worthy of this title.
A source of confusion for both speakers of Burmese and of Western
languages is the large number of persons who (though unrelated) have
the same or similar names. For example, there are three prominent “Tin
Oos” (or two “Tin Oos” and one “Tin U”) in modern Burmese history:
to differentiate between them, they are given prefixes in a manner fre-
quently resorted to by Burmese people: “MI Tin Oo” was the director
of Military Intelligence until he was purged in 1983; “S-2 Tin Oo” was
a member of the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace
and Development Council, with the office of Secretary-2; and “NLD
Tin U” is a former defense minister who now occupies a leadership po-
sition within the National League for Democracy.
The terms “Burman” and “Burmese” are also confusing (both are part
of the old nomenclature; the post-1989 equivalents are “Bamar” and
“Myanmar”). During the colonial period, the British used these terms
interchangeably. But in most postcolonial era writing, the former refers
to the dominant ethnic group, while the latter refers to nationals of the
country regardless of ethnicity. Thus, a Karen could be described as
“Burmese,” though in fact many members of this group, and other mi-
nority groups as well, insist on being identified specifically as members
of their own community as distinct from the “Burmese.” In other words,
in certain contexts, “Burman” and “Burmese” remain synonymous.
Burma’s currency is the kyat (approximately pronounced “chat”),
which because of the country’s economic weaknesses has steadily de-
preciated against the U.S. dollar on the free market. In 2005, the kyat
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xiv • READER’S NOTES

(abbreviated K) was over 1,000 to the dollar on the free market. There
is, however, an official exchange rate, which has remained steady at
around K6.00 ⫽ US$1.00 for many years. Fortunately, foreign visitors
to the country with hard currency can take advantage of the free market
rate.
In November 2005, the State Peace and Development Council com-
menced the relocation of civil servants to Pyinmana, in the central part
of the country, where the junta has been constructing a heavily fortified
compound that will serve as their new military headquarters (the “War
Office”) and a new national capital, replacing Rangoon (Yangon). The
capital’s relocation caught both Burmese and foreign observers by sur-
prise, and it seems to indicate a determination by the military elite to
isolate themselves not only from foreign countries, but also from their
own people, in the event that there is a repetition of the massive
prodemocracy demonstrations of 1988.
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Old and New Place Names

The following is a guide to geographical place names in Burma (Myan-

mar) and their alteration, as issued by the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council in the June 1989 Adaptation of Expressions Law:

Old New
Burma Myanmar
Union of Burma Union of Myanmar
Akyab (Sittwe) Sittway
Arakan State Rakhine State
Arakan Yoma Rakhine Yoma
Ava Inwa
Bassein Pathein
Bassein River Pathein River
Chindwin River Chindwinn River
Irrawaddy Delta Ayeyarwady Delta
Irrawaddy Division Ayeyarwady Division
Irrawaddy River Ayeyarwady River
Karen State Kayin State
Keng Tung (Kengtung) Kyaingtong
Kyaukpyu Kyaukphyu
Magwe Magway
Magwe Division Magway Division
Maymyo Pyin U Lwin
Mergui Myeik, Beik
Mergui Archipelago Myeik (Beik) Archipelago
Moulmein Mawlamyine
Pa-an Hpa-an
Pagan Bagan
Pegu Bago

xv
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xvi • OLD AND NEW PLACE NAMES

Pegu Division Bago Division

Pegu River Bago River
Pegu Yoma Bago Yoma
Prome Pyay
Rangoon Yangon
Rangoon Division Yangon Division
Rangoon River Yangon River
Salween River Thanlwin River
Sandoway Thandwe
Sittang River Sittoung River
Syriam Thanlyin
Tavoy Dawei
Tenasserim Division Tanintharyi Division
Toungoo Taungoo
Yenangyaung Yaynangyoung
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List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

ABFSU All Burma Federation of Student Unions

ABSDF All Burma Students’ Democratic Front
ABSU All Burma Students Union
ABYMU All Burma Young Monks’ Union
AFO Anti-Fascist Organization
AFPFL Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
ALD Arakan League for Democracy
ANC Arakan National Congress
ARMA All Ramanya Mon Association
ARNO Arakan Rohingya National Organization
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BDA Burma Defence Army
BIA Burma Independence Army
BIMSTEC Bangladesh-India-Myanmar-Sri
Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation
BNA Burma National Army
BSPP Burma Socialist Programme Party
CNF Chin National Front
CPB Communist Party of Burma
CRPP Committee Representing the People’s
Parliament
DAB Democratic Alliance of Burma
DDSI Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence
DKBA Democratic Karen Buddhist Army
DPNS Democratic Party for a New Society
DSA Defence Services Academy
DSC Defence Services Compound
DSI Defence Services Institute
FACE Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry

xvii
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xviii • LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

GCBA General Council of Burmese Associations

GCSS General Council of Sangha Sammeggi
INGO International Nongovernmental Organization
IUAB Internal Unity Advisory Board
K kyat
KIA/KIO Kachin Independence Army/Organization
KMT Kuomintang (Guomindang)
KNA Karen National Association
KNLA Karen National Liberation Army
KNPP Karenni National Progressive Party
KNU Karen National Union
LID Light Infantry Divisions
MI Military Intelligence
MIS Military Intelligence Service
MMCWA Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare
Association
MNDAA/MNDAP Myanmar National Democratic Alliance
Army/Party
MPF Myanmar Police Force
MTA Mong Tai Army
NC National Convention
NCGUB National Coalition Government of the Union
of Burma
NCUB National Council of the Union of Burma
NDA New Democratic Army
NDAA—ESS National Democratic Alliance Army—Eastern
Shan State
NDF National Democratic Front
NGO Nongovernmental Organization
NIB National Intelligence Bureau
NLD National League for Democracy
NLD—LA National League for Democracy—Liberated
Areas
NMSP New Mon State Party
NSCN National Socialist Council of Nagaland
NUF National Unity Front
NUP National Unity Party
OSS Office of Strategic Studies
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS • xix

OTS Officers Training School

PBF Patriotic Burmese Forces
PBS Press Scrutiny Board
PC People’s Council
PDP Parliamentary Democracy Party
PRC People’s Republic of China
PVO People’s Volunteer Organization
RC Revolutionary Council
RIT Rangoon Institute of Technology
RMC Regional Military Commands
RUSU Rangoon University Students Union
SACs Security and Administration Councils
SLORC State Law and Order Restoration Council
SNLD Shan Nationalities League for Democracy
SPB Socialist Party of Burma
SPDC State Peace and Development Council
SSA (South) Shan State Army (South)
UFU United Frontier Union
UNDP United Nations Development Program
UNLD United Nationalities League for Democracy
USDA Union Solidarity and Development Association
UWSA United Wa State Army
YCDC Yangon City Development Committee
YMBA Young Men’s Buddhist Association
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06-205 (01) Front.qxd 7/13/06 7:38 AM Page xxii
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Chronology

Prehistory and Early History to 1000 CE

ca. 10,000 BCE–6,000 BCE Neolithic wall paintings appear in Pad-

halin Cave, Shan State.
563 BCE–483 BCE Gotama Buddha’s lifetime, which according to
Burmese legend witnessed construction of Shwe Dagon Pagoda, cast-
ing of Maha Muni Buddha image.
ca. third century BCE According to legend, Indian Emperor Asoka
(r. 268–233 BCE) sends Buddhist missionaries to Thaton.
seventh century CE Chinese records describe Pyu state of Sri Ksetra
(Thayekhittaya).
849 CE Founding of Pagan as a walled city by Burmans.

Dynastic Burma (1000–1824)

1044 King Anawrahta establishes Pagan Dynasty (1044–ca. 1325).

1287 King Wareru establishes state at Martaban in Lower Burma.
late 13th century Keng Tung founded by Shan (Tai) ruler.
1364 Establishment of Ava as capital in Upper Burma (Ava Period,
1364–1555).
1453–1472 Reign of Mon queen, Shinsawbu (Banya Thaw), at Han-
thawaddy.
1486 Minkyinyo establishes Toungoo Dynasty (1486–1752).

xxiii
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xxiv • CHRONOLOGY

1551–1581 Reign of Bayinnaung, preeminent Burman conqueror-

king.
1600–1613 Portuguese Felipe de Brito controls Syriam.
1635 Toungoo Dynasty capital is moved from Pegu to Ava in Upper
Burma by King Thalun.
1752 Alaungpaya establishes Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885), capi-
tal at Shwebo.
1755 Alaungpaya establishes Rangoon (Yangoun), “End of Strife.”
1757 Alaungpaya captures Pegu, extinguishes Mon independence.
1767 March: King Hsinbyushin captures and pillages Siamese capi-
tal of Ayuthaya.
1770 Kaungton peace treaty between Burma and China after war
(1766–1769).
1784–1785 King Bodawpaya conquers Arakan, brings Maha Muni
Buddha image back to Upper Burma.

British Colonial Period (1825–1941)

1824–1826 First Anglo-Burmese War; ends with Treaty of Yandabo.

1826 February 24: British annex Arakan and Tenasserim.
1852 April–December: Second Anglo-Burmese War; ends with an-
nexation of Lower Burma (Pegu), including Rangoon, which becomes
British colonial capital.
1871–1872 King Mindon (r. 1853–1878) holds Fifth Great Buddhist
Council at Mandalay.
1881 Karen National Association (KNA) founded.
1885 November 14–28: Third Anglo-Burmese War.
1886 January 1: British proclaim annexation of all of Burma, as
province of British India.
1885–ca. 1890 British Pacification of Burma.
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CHRONOLOGY • xxv

1906 Young Men’s Buddhist Association established in Rangoon.

1920 March: General Council of Burmese Associations (GCBA) es-
tablished. December: First student strike in connection with Rangoon
University Act.
1923 January: “Dyarchy” reforms implemented by British.
1930 December 22: Saya San Rebellion begins in Tharrawaddy Dis-
trict.
1931 August: Saya San captured by British, executed in November.
1936 February 25: Student strike at Rangoon University protests ex-
pulsion of Ko Nu, Ko Aung San.
1937 April 1: Government of Burma Act implemented; Burma sepa-
rated from India.
1938–early 1939 Oilfield workers’ strike; massive demonstrations in
Rangoon; death of Bo Aung Gyaw, student activist mortally wounded
in protest on December 20, 1938.
1940 August: Aung San leaves Burma for China to seek foreign as-
sistance for independence struggle. November: Aung San arrives in
Japan.
1941 April–October: Thirty Comrades receive military train-
ing from Japanese on Hainan Island. December 8: Pacific War be-
gins. December 28: Burma Independence Army (BIA) established in
Bangkok.

JAPANESE OCCUPATION (1942–1945)

AND STEPS TOWARD INDEPENDENCE (1947)

1943 August 1: Japanese proclaim Burma an “independent” nation

within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; Dr. Ba Maw serves
as Nain-ngandaw Adipadi or head of state.
1944 March–June: Imphal Offensive by Japanese into northeastern
India. August: Anti-Fascist Organization founded, led by Aung San,
communists.
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xxvi • CHRONOLOGY

1945 March 27: Aung San leads rising of Burma National Army
against Japanese; anniversary known as Resistance Day/Armed
Forces Day. May: Rangoon, evacuated by Japanese, recaptured by
Allies.
1947 January 27: Aung San-Attlee Agreement signed. February 12:
Panglong Agreement concluded by Aung San and Frontier Area Lead-
ers (anniversary is Union Day). July 19: Aung San and members of his
Interim Government cabinet assassinated. October 17: Nu-Attlee
Agreement signed.

PARLIAMENTARY PERIOD (1948–1962)

1948 January 4: Burma becomes independent from British rule; U

Nu is prime minister. March 28: Communist Party of Burma, main-
stream faction under Than Tun, begins armed struggle.
1949 January: Karen National Union rebels against U Nu govern-
ment; Burma afflicted by civil war, insurgency, with large areas under
control of communists, Karens, and others.
1950 January–March: Kuomintang troops enter Shan State to estab-
lish anticommunist base.
1951 June: Burma’s first general election begins; polling not com-
plete until following year; Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AF-
PFL) and allies win 200 out of 239 seats.
1952 September 1: Shan States placed under martial law.
1956 April 27: Second general election; AFPFL wins 173 seats, Na-
tional Unity Front, 48 seats.
1958 June: AFPFL irrevocably split into “Stable” and “Clean” fac-
tions. October 28: U Nu hands power to Caretaker Government headed
by General Ne Win.
1960 January 28: Treaty and border agreement between Burma and
China signed. February: Third general election; U Nu’s “Clean” AF-
PFL faction wins solid victory. April 4: U Nu forms new government,
ending Caretaker Government period.
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CHRONOLOGY • xxvii

1961 January 24: Shan leaders in Taunggyi pass resolution calling

for enhanced federalism. August 26: Buddhism adopted as state reli-
gion of Burma; measure alienates Christians, other minorities.
1962 February 25: Federal Seminar in Rangoon begins.

BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY PERIOD (1962–1988)

1962 March 2: Ne Win leads coup d’état; 1947 constitution sus-

pended, parliament dissolved (March 3). March 9: Revolutionary
Council vests Ne Win with full governmental powers. April 3:
“Burmese Way to Socialism” ideology published. July 4: Burma So-
cialist Programme Party (BSPP) established. July 7: Troops fire on
demonstrators at Rangoon University. July 8: Rangoon University Stu-
dent Union building demolished by military; universities closed.
1962–late 1960s Nationalization of foreign and domestic companies;
private media, private schools, etc., closed or placed under state control.
1963 February 8: Pragmatist Brigadier Aung Gyi dismissed from
Revolutionary Council.
1964 March 28: Law to Protect National Solidarity makes BSPP sole
political party. May 17: First demonetization.
1967 June: Anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon grow out of Mao badge in-
cidents; crisis in Sino-Burmese relations.
1968 January 1: Communist Party of Burma base established on
China border in Shan State; commanded by Naw Seng, it has full Chi-
nese backing.
1969 August 29: Former Prime Minister U Nu establishes Parlia-
mentary Democracy Party in exile.
1971 June28–July 11 First BSPP Congress held; Twenty-Year Plan
unveiled.
1974 January 3: Constitution establishing the Socialist Republic of
the Union of Burma promulgated, following popular referendum.
May–June: Labor strikes due to shortages of food and other necessities.
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xxviii • CHRONOLOGY

December 5–11: U Thant incident; troops seize Rangoon University

campus, many students killed, arrested.
1976 July: Discovery of plot by young military officers to overthrow
Ne Win socialist regime.
mid-1978 Rohingya refugees, numbering 200,000–300,000, flee to
Bangladesh to escape persecution in Arakan State.
1980 May 24–27: Congregation of the Sangha convened, recognizes
state supervision of Buddhist monks; State Council declares general
amnesty.
October 1982 Pyithu Hluttaw passes discriminatory new citizenship
law.
1985 November 3: Second demonetization, of K100 notes.
1987 August 10: In a radio speech, Ne Win admits that serious mis-
takes were made during his years in power. September 5: Third de-
monetization; unlike previous two, without compensation, causing
great hardship for Burmese of all classes. December 11: United Nations
approves “Least Developed Country” status for Burma.

POPULAR MOVEMENT OF 1988

1988 March 12–18: Student demonstrations, harshly suppressed by

Riot Police, following March 12 teashop incident, including March 16
White Bridge Incident, in which almost 300 students are reportedly
killed by Riot Police. June: New student demonstrations in Rangoon
(Myeinigone incident, June 21); unrest spreads to Pegu, Prome, and
Moulmein. June 8: Aung Gyi’s open letter to Ne Win on political, eco-
nomic crisis. July 23–25: Extraordinary Congress of BSPP; Ne Win
proposes multiparty system, resigns as BSPP chairman. July 26–27:
Sein Lwin designated new BSPP chairman and president of Burma. Au-
gust 8: The “Four Eights” movement to topple Sein Lwin begins; huge
demonstrations; hundreds shot by army August 8–11 in Rangoon,
Sagaing, and other cities. August 12: Sein Lwin resigns. August 19:
Dr. Maung Maung appointed BSPP chairman and Burma’s president.
August 26: Aung San Suu Kyi makes speech at Shwe Dagon Pagoda,
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CHRONOLOGY • xxix

describes “second struggle for national independence.” September 17:

Trade Ministry Incident.

STATE LAW AND ORDER

RESTORATION COUNCIL (1988–1997)

1988 September 18: State Law and Order Restoration Council

(SLORC) seizes power; Army methodically snuffs out opposition in
late September, early October. September 24: National League for De-
mocracy (NLD) founded by Aung San Suu Kyi, Tin U, and Aung Gyi.
1989 March–April: Mutiny within ethnic ranks of Communist Party
of Burma results in retirement of top leaders and the party’s breakup..
July 20: SLORC places Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin U under house ar-
rest (Tin U later sentenced to jail).
1989–1997 Cease-fires concluded by SLORC and 22 major and mi-
nor ethnic armed groups, the largest of which is the United Wa State
Army.
1990 May 27: General Election; NLD wins 392 out of 485 Pyithu
Hluttaw seats contested. July 27: SLORC issues “Announcement No.
1/90” asserting its supreme power and barring NLD from forming a
government. Summer: “Overturning the Offering Bowl” protest by
Buddhist monks against SLORC, spreads from Mandalay to other
cities; suppressed by autumn. December 18: National Coalition Gov-
ernment of the Union of Burma proclaimed at Manerplaw.
1991 October 14: Announcement that Aung San Suu Kyi has been
awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
1992 April: Number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fleeing per-
secution in Burma reaches 250,000. April 23: Senior General Saw
Maung retires as SLORC chairman; succeeded by Than Shwe.
1993 January 9: National Convention convened for first time in Ran-
goon to draft outline for new constitution.
1994 Buddha Tooth Relic from China tours Burma for 45 days. Feb-
ruary 24: Kachin Independence Army/Organization signs cease-fire
with SLORC.
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xxx • CHRONOLOGY

1995 January 26: Karen National Union forces abandon Manerplaw,

which falls to Burmese army on January 27. July 10: Aung San Suu
Kyi released from house arrest, recommences political activities, in-
cluding holding public forums in front of her house on University Av-
enue, Rangoon. November 28: Boycott of National Convention an-
nounced by NLD.
1996 January 6: Khun Sa formally surrenders to the SLORC; Mong
Tai Army disbanded; former warlord retires to Rangoon, engages in
business; Burma is the world’s largest producer of opiates. Massive re-
location of people in central Shan State by army begins, affecting
300,000 by 1998. November 9: Attack on motorcade of Aung San Suu
Kyi in Rangoon by pro-regime mob. December: Students demonstrate
in Rangoon; 600 students and others arrested; Daw Suu Kyi’s house
blockaded.
1997 July 23: Burma formally admitted to the Association of South-
east Asian Nations (ASEAN).

STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (1997– )

1997 November 15: Reorganization of SLORC as State Peace and

Development Council (SPDC); corrupt generals purged, but Than
Shwe, Maung Aye, and Khin Nyunt remain top leaders.
1998 September 16: NLD establishes Committee Representing the
People’s Parliament (CRPP); confrontation between NLD and SPDC
intensifies.
1999 April: SPDC-sponsored replacement of hti on summit of
Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon.
2000 September: Aung San Suu Kyi placed under house arrest after
attempting to leave Rangoon by train for Mandalay.
October 2000–May 2002 Secret talks between Aung San Suu Kyi
and SPDC, brokered by Malaysia’s Razali Ismail, raise hopes of recon-
ciliation.
2002 March: Discovery of “coup plot” involving grandsons and son-
in-law of Ne Win; Ne Win family including daughter Sanda Win, placed
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CHRONOLOGY • xxxi

under arrest. May 6: Daw Suu Kyi released from house arrest; between
then and May 2003 makes eight trips upcountry to meet with NLD lo-
cal branches. December 5: Death of Ne Win, little or no coverage in of-
ficial press; no state funeral.
2003 May 30: Pro-regime mob attacks Aung San Suu Kyi and her
NLD supporters during upcountry trip, in Sagaing Division (“Black Fri-
day” incident); many believed killed; she is placed under house arrest
for third time after being imprisoned; the dialogue process is at an end.
2004 May 17: National Convention reconvenes. October 18: Khin
Nyunt, prime minister (since 2003) and head of Military Intelligence, is
arrested, accused of corruption and trying to split the armed forces; his
MI subordinates also arrested or retired; “hard liner” General Soe Win
becomes new prime minister.
2005 Growing movement within ASEAN to persuade Burma to relin-
quish chairmanship of ASEAN when its turn comes in 2006. February
17: National Convention reconvened, but adjourned on March 31.
March 27: Senior General Than Shwe calls for “fully institutionalized
discipline” at 60th anniversary celebration of Armed Forces Day. May
7: Three bomb blasts at crowded shopping centers in Rangoon kill and
injure large number of bystanders (official figure of 11 fatalities and
160 wounded considered underestimations); SPDC accuses foreign-
based opposition groups, but identity of the perpetrators remains un-
clear as of summer 2005. July 22: Khin Nyunt sentenced to 44 years in
jail, suspended. July 26: Burma announces it will forgo 2006 chair-
manship of ASEAN. November 6: Relocation of civil servants from
Rangoon to new capital near Pyinmana, southern Mandalay Division,
commences.
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06-205 (02) Intro.qxd 7/13/06 7:37 AM Page 1

Introduction

When Burma (Myanmar) achieved independence from British colonial

rule in 1948, many observers viewed it—with its high standards of ed-
ucation and abundant natural resources—as one of the Asian countries
most likely to achieve economic development and modernization. How-
ever, even before General Ne Win imposed military rule in March 1962,
Burma was afflicted by domestic insurgency, political factionalism, and
foreign threats along its borders, especially with China. By 1988, for-
merly poor countries, such as Indonesia and South Korea, enjoyed im-
pressive economic growth, industrialization, and the emergence of edu-
cated middle classes who supported greater political openness. But in
September of that year, Burma’s State Law and Order Restoration
Council carried out a violent reimposition of military rule, killing or in-
juring thousands of demonstrators who marched in the streets of its
cities and arresting many others. Although the new junta scrapped the
post-1962 socialist system and encouraged foreign private investment,
the economy remains in a state of disarray.
To use a cliché, Burma is a country of paradoxes, which are not con-
fined to the contrast between the country’s abundant land and natural re-
sources and its present status as one of Asia’s poorest countries. Human
relations among the Burmese, and between Burmese and foreigners, are
characterized by gentleness, grace, and an unwillingness to provoke
conflict. For the great majority of Burmese, Theravada Buddhism pro-
vides a moral compass and a means of understanding and coping with
the world. The country boasts many accomplishments in art, architec-
ture, music, and literature. But the poorly educated military elite rules
Burma almost literally at gunpoint, caring little for the people’s welfare,
and carrying out, or allowing, a large array of human rights abuses.
Though official histories celebrate patriotic struggles against the British
colonialists and the Japanese occupation, the military has reconstructed

1
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2 • INTRODUCTION

a genuinely “colonial” state in which the great majority of people are

disenfranchised, and many if not most Burmese view the regime as il-
legitimate.

LOCATION, TOPOGRAPHY, AND CLIMATE

Burma is the westernmost country in Mainland Southeast Asia,

bounded on the west and northwest by India and Bangladesh, on the
north and northeast by the People’s Republic of China, and on the east
and southeast by Laos and Thailand. To the southwest and south,
Burma has an extensive seacoast, formed by the Bay of Bengal, the
Gulf of Martaban (Mottama), and the Andaman Sea. Altogether, its
land boundaries are 6,285 kilometers (3,906 miles) in length, the
longest being with China and Thailand (2,227 kilometers/1,384 miles
and 2,098 kilometers/1,304 miles, respectively); the border with Laos,
235 kilometers (146 miles) is formed by the deepwater channel of the
Mekong River. India’s border with Burma is 1,453 kilometers (903
miles) in length, while the Bangladesh–Burma border is 272 kilome-
ters (169 miles) long. The country’s coastline, extending from the
mouth of the Naaf River in Arakan (Rakhine) State in the northwest to
Kawthaung (formerly known as Victoria Point) in the south, is 2,228
kilometers (1,385 miles) in length. There are many coastal islands, in-
cluding Ramree Island (Yanbye Kyun) off the Arakan coast and the
Mergui (Myeik) Archipelago.
The Union of Burma (Union of Myanmar) is the second largest coun-
try in the Southeast Asian region (the Republic of Indonesia being the
largest), with an area of 676,581 square kilometers (261,228 square
miles), including inland bodies of water as well as land. It is approxi-
mately the same size as the U.S. state of Texas and extends 2,052 kilo-
meters (1,275 miles) in a north-south direction from several hundred
miles north of the Tropic of Cancer to the Isthmus of Kra in the south
(more than 18 degrees 59 minutes of latitude).
In terms of physical environment, Burma can be divided into three
zones, which have had distinct impacts on the human societies living
within them: the coastal region, including the deltas of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady), Sittang (Sittoung), and Salween (Thanlwin) Rivers and
what is now Arakan (Rakhine) State; a central plain, bisected by the Ir-
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INTRODUCTION • 3

rawaddy River (which is Southeast Asia’s second longest river); and up-
land and mountainous areas, which form the country’s borders with In-
dia, China, Laos, and Thailand. The coastal and river delta regions, en-
dowed with fertile and well-watered soils where paddy rice can be
cultivated, have been home to organized states established since the
early first millennium CE by Mons and Arakanese (Rakhines). The cen-
tral plain was the original homeland of the Burmans (Bamars), the
largest ethnic group in the country, who had expanded out from this re-
gion, which includes Pagan (Bagan), Mandalay, and most other Burman
royal capitals, to impose permanent control over the Irrawaddy Delta
and Arakan by the late 18th century. The upland and mountainous areas
have been home to a large number of ethnic minority groups who, with
the exception of the Shans (Tais) in eastern Burma, did not establish or-
ganized states or adopt Indo-Buddhist civilization, as had the Burmans,
Mons, and Arakanese. Many upland minority groups living in the more
remote areas were not brought under central government control until
the late 19th or early 20th centuries, during the British colonial period;
the remotest areas, such as the Wa region on the Burma–China border,
remain effectively outside of central government control even today.
Although Burmese states have had difficulty exerting their authority
over the upland peoples, the “horseshoe” of mountains and hills where
they live—which include the eastern spur of the Himalayas and the
Chin Hills—have isolated and protected the country from domination
and cultural assimilation by powerful neighboring states, especially
those based in China or the Indian subcontinent. When the British sub-
jugated Burma in three wars during the 19th century, their route of con-
quest was not across the mountains from northeastern India, but by sea
to Rangoon (Yangon), where they established the center of their colo-
nial administration in 1852, and north along the Irrawaddy River to the
last royal capital at Mandalay, which fell to British forces in 1885. In a
similar manner, the Arakan (Rakhine) Yoma (Arakan Mountain Range)
protected the independent kingdom of Arakan from Burmese encroach-
ments until the late 18th century.
Burma’s climate is dominated by the seasonal monsoons, and most
parts of the country, with the exception of the extreme north and south,
have three recognizable seasons: a hot, dry season, from March to May;
a rainy season from May or June to October; and a cool, dry season
from November to February. The rainy season is vital for agriculture (in
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4 • INTRODUCTION

terms of gross domestic product and labor force, the most important
sector in the economy), since irrigated fields are not extensive and most
crops are rain-fed. Because of the “rain shadow” formed by the Arakan
Yoma, the Dry Zone in the central Irrawaddy Valley (the Burman heart-
land) has semidesert conditions. Traveling overland from Rangoon to
Mandalay, one encounters prosperous villages with abundant harvests
of rice, vegetables, and fruit in the south (since colonial times known as
“Lower Burma”), while outside of irrigated districts most settlements in
the arid central part of the country (“Upper Burma”) are significantly
poorer, dependent on harvests of peanuts, sesame seeds, sugar palm,
and other dry climate crops.

NATURAL RESOURCES

As mentioned, Burma is richly endowed with natural resources. Apart

from rice (Burma was the world’s largest exporter of rice before World
War II), they include petroleum, natural gas, tin, silver, lead, gold, and
some of the world’s largest, though rapidly diminishing, tropical forests,
from which teak (tectona grandis) and other hardwoods are extracted.
Fabled “pigeon blood” rubies are mined at Mogok in Mandalay Divi-
sion, and the Hpakant mine in Kachin State yields the world’s highest-
quality jade, which is especially valued in neighboring China. Since
1988, when the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized power
and established an “open” economy, the military government and its
business associates have generated large revenues from the export of raw
materials, especially natural gas from offshore wells, forest products,
and seafood. Until recently, however, probably the largest generator of
hard currency was the export of opium and heroin from the “Golden Tri-
angle” region of eastern Shan State to neighboring countries, though it is
unclear what role the military government has played in this.

ADMINISTRATION

Burma is divided into 14 regional jurisdictions, seven divisions, and

seven states: Rangoon (Yangon), Pegu (Bago), Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady),
Magwe (Magway), Mandalay, Sagaing, and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Di-
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INTRODUCTION • 5

visions; and Arakan (Rakhine), Chin, Karen (Kayin), Kayah (Karenni),

Mon, Shan, and Kachin States. States and divisions are divided into town-
ships (324 in number), and townships into (rural) village tracts and (urban)
wards. These institutions existed during the 1962–1988 Ne Win period,
but the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the present mili-
tary government, has reintroduced another level of administration, the dis-
trict (between the state/division and township levels), to strengthen central
control. Districts, which played an important role in colonial-era adminis-
tration, will probably be formalized in the new constitution that is being
drafted under SPDC auspices by the National Convention, along with pro-
visions for “autonomous regions” of some sort in ethnic minority areas.
On all administrative levels except the lowest, Peace and Development
Councils headed by military officers exercise executive authority, an
arrangement that will continue until the much-promised transition to con-
stitutional government is completed.

POPULATION, ETHNICITY, AND SOCIETY

No official census has been undertaken since 1983, when the population
was enumerated at 35.3 million. During the opening years of the 21st
century, the total population is estimated at between 48 and 50 million,
though the U.S. government provided a much lower estimate of only
42.5 million in July 2003 (CIA World Factbook). Estimates of annual
population growth also vary widely, from 0.52 percent to 1.7 percent.
Only about a quarter of the population lives in urban areas, reflecting
the relatively undeveloped industrial economy. But the former capital
and largest city, Rangoon, had between 4.5 and 5 million people in
2005, making it a good example of a Southeast Asian–style “primate
city”: not only the largest city by far in terms of population, but also the
undisputed center of political, administrative, and economic power. The
second largest city is Mandalay, with an estimated population of
600,000–800,000. Burma’s average population density, estimated by
the government in 2000 at 74 persons per square kilometer (191 persons
per square mile), is not especially high, and is exceeded by Vietnam, In-
donesia, and Thailand.
The ancestors of the modern Burmese came from various parts of
what are now western/southwestern China and Tibet over the past two
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6 • INTRODUCTION

and a half millennia, to be joined by migrants from the Indian subconti-

nent and points west in recent centuries, especially during the British
colonial era. Most of the indigenous peoples, including the Burmans
(Bamars), Karens (Kayins), Kachins, and Chins, speak Tibeto-Burman
languages, though there are significant communities of Tai-Kadai lan-
guage speakers (the Shans or Tai) and groups who speak languages re-
lated to the Austroasiatic or Mon-Khmer group (such as Mons, Palaungs,
and Was). Altogether, more than 100 indigenous languages are spoken in
the country. Since colonial times, English has also been widely used, and
Chinese is spoken in areas near the China–Burma border.
Although Burma is one of Southeast Asia’s most ethnically diverse
countries, ethnic identity before the colonial era was not clearly defined
or conceptualized. In dynastic times, the most salient social differences
were between “civilized” lowlanders, such as the Burmans, Arakanese,
Mons, and Shans, who cultivated paddy rice, lived in dynastic states,
and shared a common Indo-Buddhist civilization (as reflected, for ex-
ample, in written scripts and literatures derived from India, the popular-
ity of the Jataka or birth-tales, Indian concepts of monarchy, and the
high social status of the Buddhist monkhood or Sangha), and the prelit-
erate upland peoples who lived in much simpler societies, practiced
swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture, and were usually animists
(though lowlanders, through nat worship, also practiced forms of ani-
mism in tandem with Buddhism). For example, the Shans (Tai) of Keng
Tung, an Indo-Buddhist state established in the late 13th century,
looked upon the non-Buddhist Akha or Kaw, who lived in the sur-
rounding hills, as dangerous and uncivilized outsiders.
For reasons of administration and control as well as a zeal for scien-
tific classification, the British colonialists in the 19th century promoted
the image of Burma as a medley of diverse, colorful “races” who were
described in loving detail (languages, customs, dress, physical appear-
ance) by observers such as James George Scott. But the idea that the
colonialists used rigid ethnic labels and ethnic minority nationalism to
“divide and rule” a previously homogeneous (and harmonious)
Burmese or Myanmar nation—a common assertion of the present mili-
tary government—is at best an oversimplification. By the late 18th cen-
tury, after the Konbaung Dynasty was founded, genuinely ethnic antag-
onisms had become quite intense, especially between the Burmans and
Mons in Lower Burma, and between the Burmans and Arakanese in
Arakan, conquered by the former in 1784–1785.
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INTRODUCTION • 7

The enforcement of rigid ethnic boundaries has also remained very

much a fact of life in independent Burma, as reflected in a discrimina-
tory Citizenship Law enacted by the Ne Win government in 1982 that
made Burmese nationals of “nonindigenous” ancestry (mostly descen-
dants of Indian, Chinese, and European migrants) second-class citizens,
and by the fact that all Burmese are required to carry identification
cards that disclose both their ethnic and religious identities. Official de-
pictions of ethnic diversity focus on “exotic” dress, dance, and artifacts
(much like the British colonialists), while giving the minorities little
space in which to develop their own languages, cultures, and identities.
Because ethnic identification is not a “racial” (genetic) phenomenon,
but one dependent on self-definitions of culture, shared history, lan-
guage, and social-political environment, defining Burma’s contempo-
rary ethnic situation is difficult. According to the 1983 census, there
were 135 distinct ethnic groups in the country; some observers have
suggested that this figure is more fancy than fact (1 + 3 + 5 adds up to
9, a numerologically auspicious number for Burma’s former dictator,
Ne Win). The Burmans (Bamars), the largest group, are estimated to
constitute two-thirds of the population (about 33 million out of 50 mil-
lion), but this probably includes many persons of Mon, Karen (Kayin),
and other ancestry who have assimilated to the mainstream Burman lan-
guage, customs, and culture, and most important, to Burmese Bud-
dhism. According to Karen National Union sources, the Karen popula-
tion, including related groups (such as the Padaungs and the Karennis),
totals approximately 7 million, but Martin Smith writes that in the late
1980s the Burma Socialist Programme Party government estimated
them at only 2 million; a “neutral” figure would probably be around 3
or 4 million Karens and related groups. According to Smith’s estimates,
found in his Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, other ma-
jor groups include the Shans and Mons, with around 4 million each; the
Arakanese (Rakhines), with 2.5 million; the Chins with 2 or 3 million;
the Kachins at 1.5 million; the Palaung and Wa, 1 to 2 million; and the
Muslim Rohingyas of Arakan State, 1 to 2 million. Some ethnic groups
are very small, such as the Mokens and Tarons, numbering only a few
hundred or a few thousand.
In terms of the distribution of wealth, income, and influence,
Burma is one of Southeast Asia’s most unequal societies, and people
on the lower rungs of the social ladder, especially ethnic minorities
living in the border areas, have among the lowest standards of living
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8 • INTRODUCTION

in Southeast Asia. Although the Ne Win or Burma Socialist Pro-

gramme Party government (1962–1988) achieved some success in im-
proving standards of health and education for the population as a
whole, at least in the coastal/river delta and central plain regions
where Burmans and other lowland groups lived, overall living stan-
dards declined in comparison with the parliamentary era (1948–1962).
Post-1988 military regimes (the State Law and Order Restoration
Council, and after 1997, the State Peace and Development Council)
have promoted a ruthless brand of state capitalism that has undercut
social welfare infrastructure. The single largest item of government
expenditure is defense, more than 40 percent of total spending, while
the SPDC has spent little on health and education and has been slow
to respond to social emergencies such as heroin addiction and the
rapid spread of AIDS. Hospitals are often so poorly supplied that pa-
tients have to buy their own medicines on the black market. Because
food is increasingly expensive in an inflationary economy, malnutri-
tion is widespread, especially among children in poorer communities.
Although the military regime has made repeated verbal commitments
to liberalize the domestic agricultural market, state procurement of rice
and other staples from farmers has depressed rural standards of living,
because official prices are artificially low. The military regime fears a
repetition of the urban uprisings of 1988, which were in part inspired by
inflation and food shortages, and has tried to ensure steady supplies of
relatively cheap necessities for city dwellers. There has been some mi-
gration of unemployed or underemployed men and women from rural
to urban areas, especially Rangoon, but their economic prospects in the
city are limited because of stagnant foreign investment, international
sanctions, and the lack of a consistent rule of law, which makes doing
business highly risky for Burmese and foreigners alike. An important
post-1988 migration pattern has been the influx of Han Chinese from
neighboring Yunnan Province and elsewhere in China. In Upper Burma
(the central plain) and in the areas on or near the Burma–China border,
the new Chinese immigrants are increasingly important demographi-
cally as well as economically, as reflected in common Burmese com-
plaints that Mandalay, the old royal capital and Buddhist center, has be-
come one big “Chinatown.” In this as in other areas, there are no
reliable figures, but recent Chinese migrants in Burma probably num-
ber at least several tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands.
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INTRODUCTION • 9

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

As in other countries, social stratification in Burma is complex, but a

few generalizations can be made. First, because top-ranking officers in
the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces), including members of the
SPDC junta, wield immense personal power and influence, they have
substantial “private” control over economic resources, in large measure
through the awarding of contracts and licenses; the generals stand in a
patron–client relationship with the wealthiest business people, including
black marketers and those persons, known euphemistically as “Wa-
Kokang entrepreneurs,” who have made fortunes in the international
drug trade. In a pattern that goes back at least to the Ne Win era (despite
the pre-1988 government’s commitment to “socialist democracy”), re-
lations between military officers on all levels and black-market busi-
nesspeople have been close and symbiotic. Partial liberalization of the
economy since 1988 has also fostered the emergence of a small but
growing middle class in urban areas, though because of the lack of the
rule of law they, too, are dependent on military patronage and often suf-
fer when military patrons fall into disfavor. Because of the chronic
weakness of the kyat, Burma’s currency, people with regular access to
hard currencies, especially U.S. dollars, enjoy great economic advan-
tages.
For the lower classes, especially in rural regions where Burmans pre-
dominate, a military career offers some opportunity for social mobility
because Tatmadaw personnel have access to special stores, living quar-
ters, schools, hospitals, and other facilities. The ranks of the armed
forces have been expanded from 186,000 in 1988 to more than 400,000
in the early 21st century, meaning that there is greater need for new re-
cruits. Another path of opportunity for a poor young man is to become
a Buddhist monk, the Sangha (congregation of monks) being the most
highly regarded group in Burmese society. Buddhists, who form around
89 percent of Burma’s population, give generous offerings to the
monks. Although monks are not allowed in principle to own property or
handle money, dana (charitable donations to monks, or for pagoda proj-
ects) is believed to comprise a significant percentage of the nation’s sur-
plus wealth. Foreign visitors are often amazed at the magnificent gold
adornments of pagodas and monasteries, while secular buildings and
the houses of ordinary laypeople are usually simple and unadorned
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10 • INTRODUCTION

People at the bottom of the social ladder, who have little or no social
capital (connections to powerful or influential persons, especially the
military), include not only border-area ethnic minority villagers (though
ethnic armed insurgencies have their own, often quite wealthy, elites,
especially in drug-producing areas), many of whom have become “in-
ternal refugees,” but also villagers in the poorer areas of the Dry Zone
(prime recruiting ground for the Tatmadaw), and the urban unemployed
or underemployed, such as day laborers, street vendors, and pedicab
(“sidecar”) drivers. Among the poorest people are those who were
forcibly relocated after 1988 from the city centers of Rangoon and Man-
dalay to remote “new towns” on the outskirts, where employment op-
portunities are minimal.
British colonial observers often claimed that Burmese women en-
joyed freedom and social status approaching equality to men to an even
greater degree than that of their European counterparts, but women out-
side of the wealthiest classes today are an especially vulnerable group.
Poor women sometimes face horrifying choices, between letting their
children starve or a life of prostitution. Some women become silashin,
Buddhist devotees (sometimes described as Buddhist “nuns”) and find
refuge in a life devoted to spiritual ends.

RELIGIOUS LIFE

Theravada Buddhism remains at the core of Burma’s national identity.

Since the SLORC was established in September 1988, the new military
government has made generous donations to members of the Sangha
and sponsored ambitious pagoda construction projects, including re-
placement in 1999 of the hti (umbrella, or finial) on top of the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda, Burma’s holiest Buddhist site. Despite the restiveness
and occasional political activism of younger monks, the junta has
largely succeeded in co-opting older or senior monks and uses pagoda
projects as a means of asserting its legitimacy. For example, at the new
White Stone Buddha complex in Insein Township, Rangoon, where a
huge, 500-ton marble Buddha image is located, there are large color
pictures showing the top SPDC generals venerating the image.
But contemporary Burmese Buddhism is highly diverse and em-
braces many seemingly contradictory practices. Some Burmese un-
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INTRODUCTION • 11

dergo intensive meditation regimes (vipassana or insight meditation) at

centers in Rangoon and elsewhere, which were founded by such teach-
ers as the Mahasi Sayadaw or U Ba Khin, or have personal spiritual ad-
visors to help them along the most austere paths to Enlightenment. Oth-
ers, laypeople as well as monks, study the Pali Canon, and in a few
cases even commit the entire body of scripture to memory (a project
that can take up to 10 years). Yet Buddhism also merges with supernat-
uralism: astrology, alchemy, numerology, the study of omens, yedaya
(preventive magic), nat (spirit) worship, and other phenomena regarded
as outside of orthodox Buddhist teachings. Supernatural practices seem
to reflect the atmosphere of fear and insecurity that pervades social life,
for the military and business elites as well as ordinary people.
Religious minorities are marginalized. This is especially true of
Muslims, most of whom are descendants of South Asian immigrants
who arrived in the country during the British period. There are tight
restrictions on Muslim religious activities, especially in Arakan State,
and post-1962 governments have apparently been involved in, or have
encouraged, their persecution; for example, twice, in 1978 and
1991–1992, 200,000 to 300,000 Muslim Rohingyas fled to neighbor-
ing Bangladesh to escape army persecution in Arakan. Conditions for
Burmese Christians, such as the large community of Karen Baptists
who live in Rangoon, are generally better; for example, they are al-
lowed to maintain some links to Christian churches outside the coun-
try. In many ethnic minority areas, especially where Karens, Kachins,
and Chins live, the church, brought by missionaries in the 19th cen-
tury, remains the core of educational, social, and spiritual life. But
Christian activities are also limited by the state, which despite the lack
of a constitutional provision making Buddhism the official religion
has tended to act on the old notion “to be Burmese is to be Buddhist.”
In other words, non-Buddhists are a “Them” juxtaposed to a Buddhist
“Us.”

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

As mentioned, the peoples of Burma are descendants of migrants who

came from other parts of the Asian continent. This occurred during a
formative period lasting from around the last few centuries BCE to the
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12 • INTRODUCTION

early second millennium CE, though the migration has continued up to

the present, as the settlement of Han Chinese in Upper Burma after
1988 attests. The first organized states in the early centuries CE, bor-
rowing from Indo-Buddhist civilization, emerged in the coastal and
river delta region, among the Mons and the Arakanese, who benefited
from regional trade networks linking different communities along the
Indian Ocean littoral. The Pyus, a people who entered the central plain
at an indeterminate time, had dynastic states, a sophisticated material
culture, and the practice of Buddhism and Hindu cults by the time Chi-
nese records describe their state at Sri Ksetra (Thayekkhitaya, near
modern Prome) in the seventh century. The Pyus were displaced, and
probably absorbed, by the Burmans, who built a wall around the town
of Pagan (Bagan) in 849 CE.

Dynastic Burma
From a Burman perspective, the country’s history as a nation began
with the reign of King Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077), founder of the Pagan
(Bagan) Dynasty (1044–ca. 1325). He unified Upper and Lower Burma
with the conquest of the Mon kingdom of Thaton in 1057 and brought
its king, Manuha (described by some Burmese today as the country’s
“first political prisoner”); his family; and thousands of Mon monks,
scholars, and artisans back to his royal capital. The Mons were to the
Burmans what the Greeks were to the Romans, transmitters of a more
sophisticated civilization, but the single greatest contribution of
Anawrahta to Burma’s evolving statehood was his recognition of Ther-
avada Buddhism as the official religion, suppressing or subordinating
other cults and establishing a close, symbiotic relationship between
state and Sangha that continues, in much altered form, today. For this he
depended on Mon monks, especially the revered Shin Arahan, for guid-
ance. Physically, the most enduring legacy of the reign of Anawrahta
and his successors are the several thousand pagodas, pahto (temples),
and monasteries spread out across the Pagan plain—among the most
impressive being the Ananda Temple, built by Kyanzittha (r.
1084–1113), and the Shwezigon Pagoda, built by Anawrahta and com-
pleted by Kyanzittha—which are recognized along with the Angkor ru-
ins in Cambodia and the Borobudur temple in Java as the most out-
standing monuments in the Southeast Asia region.
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INTRODUCTION • 13

By the early 14th century, the Pagan monarchy had come to an end,
its decline impelled in part by the Mongol invasion of 1287. Centuries
of unrest and confusion followed in Upper Burma, though a new Bur-
man royal capital was established at Ava (Inwa) in 1364. For the Mons
in Lower Burma and the Arakanese, however, the 14th, 15th, and 16th
centuries were a golden age, as witnessed by the reigns of King
Razadarit (r. 1385–1423), Queen Shinsawbu (r. 1453–1472), and King
Dhammazedi (r. 1472–1492) at Hanthawaddy (modern-day Pegu [Bago]),
the last two being devout Buddhists who donated generously to the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda; and King Min Bin (r. 1531–1553) at Mrauk-U, a
cosmopolitan city that Portuguese voyagers described in glowing terms.
Min Bin and his successors were perhaps unique among Burmese rulers
in making full use of naval power, expanding Arakan’s domains to in-
clude parts of present-day Bangladesh. North of the now-abandoned
Arakanese capital is a complex of temples and pagodas, most notably
the Shittaung (Sittaung) Temple, built in a style quite distinct from those
of the Irrawaddy Valley.
During the reigns of Kings Tabinshwehti (r. 1531–1550) and Bayin-
naung (r. 1551–1581), the country was united under a new Burman
royal house, the Toungoo Dynasty (1486–1752), which traced its ori-
gins to the town of the same name in the Sittang (Sittoung) River Val-
ley. Bayinnaung was the consummate conqueror king, imposing his au-
thority over the Shan States; the rival Siamese kingdom of Ayuthaya,
whose capital he captured in the 1560s; and Laos. Upper and Lower
Burma were united after Bayinnaung captured Ava in 1555, and the
Toungoo Dynasty monarchs established their seat of power at the old
Mon city of Hanthawaddy (Pegu), which became renowned among
Southeast Asian capitals for its wealth and power. But Bayinnaung’s
death in 1581 signaled the dynasty’s decline, and by century’s end
Lower Burma was in a state of turmoil due to invasions by the
Arakanese and Siamese and civil war.
However, the Toungoo Dynasty, restored, persisted until the mid-
18th century. A fateful development was the decision of King Thalun (r.
1629–1648) to move the capital from Pegu back to Ava in the central
plain in 1635; its inland location cut off the Burman power center from
seaborne foreign trade and cosmopolitan influences, encouraging an
isolationist worldview that was especially strong during the subsequent
Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885).
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14 • INTRODUCTION

The Konbaung Dynasty was the third high tide of Burman imperial
expansion. Alaungpaya, its founder (r. 1752–1760), ruthlessly crushed
Mon and other rebel movements in Lower Burma and led an unsuc-
cessful invasion of Siam; his son Hsinbyushin (r. 1763–1776) captured
and pillaged Ayuthaya in 1767 and waged a successful campaign
against Chinese attempts to impose suzerainty in the Shan States in
1766–1769; another of Alaungpaya’s sons, Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819),
conquered the hitherto independent kingdom of Arakan in 1784–1785,
launched numerous unsuccessful invasions of Siam, and promoted land
surveys and expansion of irrigation in his kingdom. In his last years,
however, he seems to have been afflicted with megalomania, as re-
flected in his construction of the massive Pagoda at Mingun on the Ir-
rawaddy River (if completed, it would have been 170 meters high) and
his claims to be a “Future Buddha,” which the Sangha refused to rec-
ognize.

The Colonial Period

The British colonial occupation of Burma was accomplished in three
operations during the 19th century: the so-called First, Second, and
Third Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1824–1826, 1852, and 1885, respec-
tively. British motivations for the occupation included the need to de-
fend imperial possessions in India (the best defense being expansion,
in the imperial mindset), first, from Burmese expansionism into what
are now northeastern India—Assam and Manipur—and Bangladesh
(the 1824–1826 war), and later from (perceived) French encroach-
ments in Upper Burma (the 1885 war); the lure of Burma’s abundant
natural resources, especially minerals and forest products, and schemes
to open up a southwest trade route from Burma into China’s Yunnan
Province that never came to fruition; and the alleged intransigence of
the Konbaung kings, though King Mindon (r. 1853–1878), the most
enlightened of his line, attempted, like his counterpart Mongkut in
Siam, to promote friendly relations with Britain and modest internal re-
forms. On the eve of the third war, the British press portrayed Thibaw,
dynastic Burma’s last king (r. 1878–1885), as a liquor-sodden, Orien-
tal Caligula. In fact, he was a weak and indecisive monarch, manipu-
lated by his determined wife and only queen, Supayalat, and short-
sighted court factions.
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INTRODUCTION • 15

Only the 1824–1826 operation was a war in the genuine sense, in-
volving combat between British and Burmese forces in northeastern In-
dia and a British expeditionary force, which landed at Rangoon, fought
numerous engagements in and around the city, and pushed its way up to
Yandabo on the Irrawaddy River before imposing a treaty on King
Bagyidaw (r. 1819–1837), who ceded Arakan and Tenasserim
(Tanintharyi) to British control and recognized the states of northeast-
ern India as lying within the British sphere of influence. The 1852 war,
sparked by a minor dispute over indemnities and alleged mistreatment
of British merchants, was a model episode of “gunboat diplomacy” that
led to the annexation of Lower Burma, including Rangoon. This left the
Konbaung kingdom as a rump, consisting of Upper Burma with loose
control over border area tributaries. The 1885 war, whose immediate
cause was a commercial dispute over forestry leases, reflected the
British assumption that Burma’s independence was a fiction, and that
full colonial occupation was both progressive and inevitable.
However, the fall of Mandalay in November 1885 and the British de-
cision to abolish the monarchy stirred countrywide resistance. During
1885–1890, the British had to call in extra troops from India to carry out
what became known as the “Pacification of Burma,” a classic colonial
war fought against rural guerrillas, often led by a minlaung, or pretender-
king, who wished to restore the old dynasty or establish a new one. The
British also imposed control over the upland ethnic minority areas, a
more gradual process that continued into the early 20th century. For ex-
ample, the Chin Hills were not fully under British control until after the
1917–1919 Anglo-Chin War.
The British colonial occupation transformed Burmese society, though
the impact of the transformation differed according to region and ethnic/
social group. Most fundamentally, the country was integrated into a
globalized economic system that the British themselves dominated dur-
ing the 19th and early 20th centuries. After Lower Burma was annexed
in 1852, they encouraged Burmese migration from still-independent
Upper Burma in order to develop an economy based on the cultivation
and commercial export of rice. The settlement of the Irrawaddy Delta
and the area around Rangoon, which had been depopulated by wars be-
tween Burmans and Mons in the previous century, was similar, in many
ways, to the opening up of the American and Canadian West at roughly
the same time: The government offered inducements to farmers and
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16 • INTRODUCTION

their families, built infrastructure for irrigation and transportation, and

established a business-friendly legal regime that benefited large compa-
nies such as the Irrawaddy Flotilla and Steel Brothers and Company. By
the close of the 19th century, this policy was a resounding success. Fa-
cilitated by advances in steamship technology and the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869, shipments of Burmese rice reached global markets,
and the country became the world’s largest exporter of this staple, a sta-
tus it enjoyed until World War II. As long as land remained plentiful and
rice prices relatively high, Burmese farmers benefited, and a modest
consumer economy developed in Lower Burma’s villages.
Other natural resources were thoroughly exploited. The British estab-
lished a strict system of forest conservation that prevented reserves of
teak and other tropical hardwoods from being depleted, a model for
forestry in other countries. But forestry was dominated by large, foreign-
owned firms that had exclusive rights to exploit leaseholds from the gov-
ernment. Oil had been extracted from wells in central Burma since at
least Konbaung times, but the British-owned Burmah Oil Company built
modern wells at Yenangyaung (Yaynangyoung) and Chauk, and a refin-
ery at Syriam (Thanlyin) near Rangoon. The Namtu-Bawdwin mines in
the Shan States, operated by the Burma Corporation, were the world’s
largest source of lead, and one of the world’s largest sources of silver, be-
fore World War II. Other profitable natural resources exported from
Burma included tin, rubber, and gemstones.
Thus, Burma developed into a classic colonial economy based on the
export of raw materials, with only very modest industry and most man-
ufactured goods being imported. This was also an economy dominated
by foreigners. At its apex stood large, British- (or Scottish-) owned
companies, such as the Irrawaddy Flotilla; while foreign Asians, mostly
Indian but also Chinese, dominated its lower rungs as shopkeepers,
craftsmen, laborers, and—perhaps most important—moneylenders,
who provided Burmese farmers with the credit they needed to carry
them through to harvest time. Most prominent among the moneylend-
ers were the Chettiars from South India, who, as economic conditions
deteriorated during the early 20th century, were bitterly resented by ru-
ral people.
Rangoon, the provincial capital, was a symbol of the economic and
ethnic contradictions of colonial society. In 1941, it had a population of
half a million, and because of the colonial export trade was one of the
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INTRODUCTION • 17

most modern cities in Asia, though without the industrialism of Tokyo,

Osaka, or Shanghai. But more than two-thirds of its population was
non-Burmese, most of these being immigrants from British India
(which also included modern Pakistan and Bangladesh), with smaller
numbers of Chinese, Europeans, Eurasians (Anglo-Indians or Anglo-
Burmese), Sephardic Jews, and Armenians. A majority of middle- and
lower-level civil servants, police, and professionals (physicians, engi-
neers, accountants) were Indians, and the central business district
fronted by the Rangoon River was dominated demographically by for-
eign Asians. Throughout Lower Burma, Indian immigrants, including
agricultural laborers who could be paid the cheapest of wages, were a
growing percentage of the population, since migration from their South
Asian homelands—which shared with Burma a common political juris-
diction as part of British India—was not only administratively unim-
peded but also encouraged by business interests.
This was what John S. Furnivall, a perceptive British observer of pre-
war Burma, called the “plural society”—an arrangement in which eth-
nic groups, both foreign and indigenous, not only carefully preserved
their cultural, linguistic and religious identities (usually living in sepa-
rate neighborhoods), but also interacted primarily in the marketplace
and found themselves locked into an ethnically defined economic divi-
sion of labor. In Burma, the pluralistic society tended to marginalize the
indigenous peoples, especially the Buddhist Burmese. As economic
conditions deteriorated in the early 20th century (reflected in falling
prices for paddy rice paid to farmers and a high rate of foreclosure due
to their inability to repay debts to moneylenders), the division of labor
created clear economic winners and losers, who were ethnically de-
fined. Naturally, a feeling of common citizenship or sense of identifica-
tion with a national as opposed to an ethnic community was nonexist-
ent. Conflict was inevitable.
The plural society problem was eventually “solved” at great human
and economic cost through the mass overland evacuations of Indians at
the beginning of World War II and the nationalizations of the Burma So-
cialist Programme Party era (1962–1988), which bankrupted many of
the remaining South Asians and forced them to return to their ancestral
homelands. Following the anti-Chinese riots of June 1967, many Chi-
nese also left the country. By the early 1970s, the foreign Asian popu-
lation had dwindled in Rangoon and other parts of Lower Burma.
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18 • INTRODUCTION

However, geography, prejudice, and colonial policy conspired to cre-

ate another problem that proved insurmountable after the country
achieved independence in 1948: the deep political, social, and psycho-
logical rift between the peoples of the lowland areas, the coast, and cen-
tral plain, which as mentioned were sites of Indo-Buddhist states since
the early centuries CE, and the peoples of the upland and mountainous
border areas, where social systems and religious institutions were less
sophisticated and a subsistence economy prevailed. Colonial adminis-
trators institutionalized and perpetuated this division by placing the
lowlands (“Burma Proper”) and uplands (the “Frontier Areas,” about
40–45 percent of Burma’s total land area) under different systems of
administration, though both were under the authority of the British
governor.
“Burma Proper” had a rationalized system of direct rule (as de-
scribed below), which reflected its economic importance to the British
and its integration into the global system; in the “Frontier Areas” was
a system of indirect rule in which local rulers—Shan sawbwas,
Kachin duwas, Chin ram-uk—were confirmed in their authority
through treaties with the British government. These “feudal” elites en-
joyed considerable autonomy, though British officials promoted law
and order and kept a sharp eye out for foreign interlopers. With the ex-
ception of the Namtu-Bawdwin mines near Lashio in the Shan States,
the Frontier Areas were economically undeveloped, and there was lit-
tle or no infrastructure. The biggest cash crop was opium, grown and
exported from the small state of Kokang on the China–Burma border.
Educational and health facilities were poor, though Christian mission-
aries did much-needed work in this area, along with spreading the
gospel among animist tribespeople.
Upland minority peoples had few opportunities to associate with
their fellow colonial subjects in the lowland areas, intensifying prob-
lems of communication and trust, the seriousness of which the British
did not fully appreciate until after World War II. However, as men-
tioned, the alleged British policy of “divide and rule” has to be seen
in a broader historical context: though conceived differently in differ-
ent eras, inter-ethnic hostilities were nothing new at the time of the
1826 Treaty of Yandabo. In the words of an Arakanese writer, “the
horse [of ethnic animosity] was saddled and ready; all the British had
to do was ride it.”
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INTRODUCTION • 19

The colonial armed forces were small, just a few thousand soldiers
after World War I, but the great majority of them were border area
people, especially Chins and Kachins, as well as Karens. Given their
history of insurrection, Burmans were not considered trustworthy as
soldiers. Karen–Burman relations, characterized by mutual suspicion
if not hostility, posed special problems for national integration. Large
numbers of them lived in the Irrawaddy Delta and Rangoon as well
as in the remoter Burma–Thailand border region, and a vigorous eth-
nic consciousness emerged, with British encouragement, especially
after the establishment of the Karen National Association by Christ-
ian leaders in 1881 (though only a minority of Karens were, and are,
Christians; the others are Buddhists and animists). Of all the minor-
ity peoples, the Karens developed the strongest sense of their sepa-
rate nationhood under British rule, as expressed in Sir San Crombie
Po’s classic Burma and the Karens (1928); they also had the greatest
apprehensions about what their future would be in a postcolonial,
Burman-dominated state.
Administratively, Burma was a province of British India, which cre-
ated further problems becausee conditions in the country were different
from the caste-ridden subcontinent, and Indian laws and administrative
practices were not always appropriate. In the lowland areas under the
old kings, hereditary myothugyi (“circle chiefs”) based in regional
towns but with authority over adjoining villages played an important
role in mediating between the central authorities and village communi-
ties, especially in matters of labor service and taxation. But the British
abolished their posts in the late 1880s, regarding the myothugyi as un-
trustworthy, and redesigned local and regional administration in con-
formity with a rationalized, hierarchical model that often did not win
the allegiance or cooperation of local people.
There was a strong feeling among many Burmans that the British
government, having sent King Thibaw into exile, was illegitimate. The
self-government measures that the British introduced before World War
II—the “dyarchy” reforms of 1923 and the Government of Burma Act
of 1935, implemented in 1937—were generally met with indifference,
skepticism, or hostility, as reflected in low voting rates for the legisla-
tive assembly and a vocal noncooperation movement. Constitutional re-
forms were not an expression of the popular will, but the result of deci-
sions made in distant London that had little positive impact on people’s
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20 • INTRODUCTION

everyday economic condition. Business interests remained dominant in

the reformed legislatures.
Burmese (or Burman) nationalism evolved steadily during the first
three decades of the 20th century. Early movements focused on defense
of the Buddhist religion, which was widely believed to be imperiled by
the lack of state support (the colonial government was secular); official
tolerance, though not active promotion of, Christian missionary activi-
ties; and the decline in popularity of traditional monastery schools
(kyaung), as more and more Burmese, especially in the urban and upper
strata, sought a modern education for their children. A Young Men’s
Buddhist Association (YMBA) was established in Arakan in 1902, and
there was a branch in Rangoon four years later. Modeled on the YMCA,
the YMBA soon spread nationwide and attracted reform-minded
laypeople.
The “shoe controversy”—the refusal of some European visitors to
take off their footwear while visiting pagoda precincts, seen by
Burmese Buddhists as a sign of disrespect—became a nationwide issue
backed by the YMBA in 1916, and a learned monk, the Ledi Sayadaw,
published an influential essay, On the Impropriety of Wearing Shoes on
Pagoda Platforms. Public pressure finally forced the British to allow
trustees to bar shoe-wearing visitors from entering pagoda premises.
One of the most prominent early political figures was U Ottama, an
Arakanese Buddhist monk who believed colonial rule had led to
Burma’s moral decline, and inspired thousands of young “political
pongyis (monks)” in monasteries around the country. Their noisy
demonstrations of opposition to the British presence were described
rather unsympathetically by the writer George Orwell in his famous es-
say, “Shooting an Elephant.” U Ottama and U Wisara, another promi-
nent monk activist, spent much of the 1920s and 1930s in jail, and the
latter died on a hunger strike there in 1929.
Buddhism’s—or rather, traditional, monastery-based Buddhism’s—
potential for inspiring nationalist resistance, however, was limited, be-
cause most of the senior monks were intensely conservative, and the
younger ones, the political pongyis, remained largely outside of the new
class of urban-based, secular-oriented intellectuals who increasingly
took the initiative in political movements. In December 1920, college
students conducted a strike in protest against the implementation of
the Rangoon University Act, which established an elitist, British-style
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INTRODUCTION • 21

degree-granting institution designed to produce graduates who would

enter the civil service and professions. Although the strike failed, the
students and their sympathizers established “national schools” around
the country that taught a Burmese curriculum; their most famous alum-
nus was independence leader Aung San, who studied at a national
school in Yenangyaung (Yaynangyoung). It was these college and high
school student activists, rather than mainstream politicians, who played
a major role in confronting colonial rule and developing a tradition of
revolutionary nationalism during the late 1930s.
The year 1930 was an important turning point for several reasons.
First, communal violence between Burmese and Indians broke out in
Rangoon in May, with hundreds of fatalities, most of them Indians. The
British authorities were unprepared for the mob attacks, which raged
unchecked for two days. The incident revealed the depth of the ethnic/
communal divide, made worse by deteriorating economic conditions,
and there were further outbreaks of communal violence throughout the
1930s. In the wake of the 1930 riots, urban intellectuals established the
Dobama Asiayone (“We Burmans Association”), which became the
most important political organization before World War II. Shaped by a
surprising assortment of worldviews and ideologies, including Marx-
ism-Leninism, Fabian socialism, Gandhism, and fascism, the Dobama
Asiayone, also known as the Thakin Party, became increasingly militant
and played a prominent role in the Oilfield Workers’ Strike of 1938. A
third important development was the revolt led by Saya San, a native
physician and former Buddhist monk, which broke out in Tharrawaddy
District north of Rangoon in December but soon spread to both Upper
and Lower Burma. Though it was largely suppressed by the British the
following year (Saya San was captured in the Shan States, and executed
in November 1931), his tattooed peasant soldiers won the admiration of
the people, even if their worldview was judged too traditionalist by
Burmese with a modern education.
Students again became prominent in the nationalist movement when
radical leaders were elected to the Rangoon University Students’
Union (RUSU) in 1935. Maung Nu (later U Nu) became its president
and Aung San a member of RUSU’s executive committee and editor of
its magazine, Oway. The two were expelled from the university in
early 1936 because of the publication in Oway of an article deemed of-
fensive by the school authorities. Following a strike by students during
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22 • INTRODUCTION

February–May of that year, they were reinstated, and they then estab-
lished a nationwide student organization known as the All Burma Stu-
dents’ Union (ABSU). This brought the young leaders to national
prominence. In 1937–1938, both Nu and Aung San became members
of the Dobama Asiayone, and the latter, serving as secretary general of
the Thakin Party, joined with the Sinyetha Party of Dr. Ba Maw, a for-
mer prime minister and prominent mainstream politician, to form the
Freedom Bloc after the outbreak of the war in Europe. The Freedom
Bloc demanded self-rule, but the Churchill government, preoccupied
with the threat of Nazi Germany, refused in any way to accommodate
Burmese national aspirations.

The Japanese Occupation, 1941–1945

World War II and the 1942–1945 Japanese occupation were forma-
tive historical experiences, which transformed the country almost as
fundamentally as the colonial occupation. First, the war provided
Burmese (or Burman) nationalism with an epic myth: Aung San’s se-
cret departure from the country with a fellow Thakin in August 1940,
his contact with Japanese agents in the Chinese port city of Amoy (Xi-
amen), and his fateful journey to Tokyo, where he agreed, with many
misgivings, to cooperate with the Japanese military in exchange for
their backing of the independence movement. With the support of
Colonel Suzuki Keiji, head of the clandestine Minami Kikan (Minami
Organ), he returned to Burma and recruited members of the Thakin
Party to be smuggled out of the country. These men, along with Aung
San and his original companion in Amoy, were the Thirty Comrades,
who received military training from the Minami Kikan on the island
of Hainan and formed the nucleus of the Burma Independence Army
(BIA), which was established in Bangkok on December 28, 1941, af-
ter the outbreak of the Pacific War on December 8. The BIA, whose
commander was Suzuki (who assumed the nom de guerre Bo Mogyo,
the “Commander Thunderbolt” of Burmese legend), served as an aux-
iliary to the Japanese Army when it invaded Burma at the end of 1941.
Poorly organized, composed of thousands of inexperienced young na-
tionalists who joined its ranks and not a few village bullies, it could
claim little credit for defeating the British. But its psychological im-
pact on the Burmese was immense: For the first time since 1885, there
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INTRODUCTION • 23

was a Burman army commanded by heroic young patriots. As the

Japanese invasion progressed, the BIA also established provisional
administrations in liberated areas. Official historiography in Burma
dates the history of the Tatmadaw, the present-day armed forces, from
the BIA’s establishment.
The principal Japanese objective in occupying Burma was to cut off
the Burma Road, which was the sole route by means of which the
British and Americans provided material support for Chiang Kai-shek
(Jiang Jyeshi) at his wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing); they
hoped the cut-off would force Chiang to accept a resolution of the
“China Incident” (the Sino-Japanese War) favorable to themselves. The
Japanese war effort also required the raw materials that Burma could
supply, especially rice and petroleum. The invasion began from bases in
Thailand, formally Japan’s ally, in December 1941, and the entire coun-
try, with the exception of the most remote Frontier Areas, was occupied
by mid-1942; Rangoon fell in March, Mandalay in May, and Lashio, the
northernmost point of rail links with the port of Rangoon and the start-
ing point of the Burma Road to the Chinese border, in the same month.
British commander General William Slim ordered a strategic retreat
into India; the spectacle of the British giving way before the Japanese
onslaught did little for the colonial rulers’ prestige, but it kept Slim’s
forces largely intact for the reoccupation of Burma in 1944–1945.
Although Suzuki, a Lawrence of Arabia–type figure, was sympa-
thetic to the Thirty Comrades’ longing for independence, the regular
Japanese military had other ideas: Burma was of value only insofar as
it could be exploited for raw materials and manpower and could be used
as a jumping-off point for an invasion of India. When Moulmein
(Mawlamyine) fell in early 1942, the Japanese established a military ad-
ministration that would administer all occupied areas, rather than grant-
ing the country immediate independence. This was the first of many dis-
appointments for the Thakins, most of whom had leftist sympathies and
were unenthusiastic about collaborating with “fascist Japan.” By 1944,
a small circle of Thakins, including Aung San and Than Tun (who later
led the Communist Party of Burma), had established the underground
Anti-Fascist Organization to plan an uprising against the Japanese in
coordination with Allied operations.
The military administration ran the country until August 1, 1943,
when Premier Tojo Hideki proclaimed Burma’s independence as a
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24 • INTRODUCTION

member of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Dai To–a Kyo–ei
Ken). Dr. Ba Maw was appointed Nain-ngandaw Adipadi (head of state)
in a regime that he described as “totalitarian” in nature. But Burma’s in-
dependence was fictional, and the more arrogant Japanese officers
treated its highest officials, including Ba Maw and Foreign Minister
Thakin Nu, with barely disguised contempt.
But under both the military administration and Ba Maw’s “indepen-
dent” state, space was opened up within which Burmese could organize
socially, politically, and even militarily. Japanese-sponsored groups,
such as the East Asia Youth League and civil defense groups established
by Ba Maw provided valuable leadership and organizational experience
for young nationalists, but the most important institution to grow out of
the Japanese occupation was the army. The BIA was dissolved in July
1942 and replaced by a smaller but more rationally structured Burma
Defence Army (BDA), whose commander was Aung San. Following in-
dependence in 1943, the BDA was transformed into the Burma National
Army (BNA). Aung San became a member of Ba Maw’s cabinet as war
minister, and Ne Win was appointed BNA commander. An officers’
training school was established at Mingaladon, north of Rangoon, and
a number of promising young men were sent off to Japan for training in
military academies.
For the Burmans, wartime memories of the Japanese were not as bit-
ter as in many neighboring countries, but the Kempeitai, the military po-
lice, carried out a reign of terror, arresting, torturing, and killing sus-
pected communists or Allied agents. An estimated 100,000 Asians,
including Burmese, died as forced laborers during construction of the
notorious Thai–Burma Railway. The war also had an immense impact
on the ethnic minorities, especially the Karens. During the opening
months of the war, Karen soldiers fought alongside the British; after
their defeat, they were demobilized. Returning to their homes in the Ir-
rawaddy Delta, they became involved in armed clashes with BIA men,
which led to a race war: Hundreds of villages were burned, and Karens,
including women and children, were massacred, especially in
Myaungmya (Myoungmya) district. The experience taught the Karens
never to trust the Burmans, although both Aung San and Ba Maw tried
to improve relations. There was also mob violence in early 1942 be-
tween Buddhist Arakanese and Muslims in Arakan. In the Frontier Ar-
eas, Kachin, Chin, Naga, and other “hill tribe” soldiers fought on the
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INTRODUCTION • 25

British side, and the isolation of their homelands was lost forever; after
the war, some of these veterans, especially Kachins, began armed re-
sistance against the central government.
Following the disastrous Japanese Imphal Campaign into northeast-
ern India in March–June 1944, which bled their forces white, the Allies
began their offensives into northwestern and central Burma. On March
27, 1945, Aung San ordered the BNA to rise up against the Japanese—
a pivotal event in official historiography that is now commemorated as
Armed Forces Day (or Resistance Day). For the Tatmadaw, it is a mat-
ter of great pride that its earliest recruits fought not only the “British
colonialists,” but also the “Japanese fascists.” By May 1945, the Allies
had recaptured Rangoon, and Japanese forces were in full retreat toward
the Thai border.

The Achievement of Independence, 1945–1948

Although the British had retaken Burma, the climate of opinion in
the country at war’s end, especially among the politically mobilized
Burmans, was such that the colonial status quo ante could never be
restored. But if the initial Japanese victory had shattered the myth of
European invincibility and drawn down the curtain on Burma’s colo-
nial era, the war also left the country in a terrible shambles. During
their retreat from the country in 1942, the British carried out a “pol-
icy of denial,” destroying vital infrastructure, such as the Syriam oil
refinery and most Irrawaddy Flotilla riverboats. The economy was
further devastated during the 1944–1945 Allied offensives, the
largest land operations in the Pacific War. Wartime communal vio-
lence had inflamed ethnic hostilities, especially among the Karens,
whose most prominent leaders were dead set against any political
arrangement that included integration with Burma. Pocket armies
sprang up everywhere, and communist guerrillas were numerous and
well organized. Both in central Burma and the Frontier Areas, it was
men with guns, rather than officials or politicians, who determined
the country’s future. Had the war never taken place, or if the Japan-
ese had not occupied the country, that future would most certainly
have been more benign.
The prewar political establishment had been largely discredited (in-
cluding Ba Maw, who was briefly imprisoned by the Allies in Tokyo),
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26 • INTRODUCTION

and the country’s fate was increasingly caught up with the career of
Aung San, who as commander of the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF),
as the BNA was renamed after it joined with Allied forces in fighting
the Japanese, enjoyed immense popularity. Only 30 years old at war’s
end, Aung San was considered a collaborationist by some British offi-
cials but had made a very positive impression on field commanders (in-
cluding General Slim) and Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of the South-
East Asia Command, who at a September 1945 conference at Kandy, Sri
Lanka, offered him command of the postwar Burma Army. He declined,
saying he intended to devote himself to politics. Aung San was presi-
dent of the country’s most popular and effective political organization,
the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), which had grown
out of the wartime Anti-Fascist Organization. It was a broad united front
that included communist and noncommunist labor unions, peasant as-
sociations, women’s and youth groups, and ethnic organizations repre-
senting Arakanese, Karens, and Shans, with a total membership of
around 200,000. In December 1945, the AFPFL established its own
paramilitary force, the People’s Volunteer Organization (PVO), com-
posed largely of BNA and PBF veterans.
Between late 1945 and early 1947, Burma was on the verge of civil
war. The prewar British governor, Reginald Dorman-Smith, reassumed
his post; he regarded Aung San as untrustworthy and sought to reinstate
the old politicians, especially U Saw, a personal friend, brought back
from East Africa, where he had been interned for attempting to make
contact with the Japanese in 1941 (a fact of some relevance to British
charges that Aung San had been a traitor). But Dorman-Smith was re-
placed by Hubert Rance, a military officer close to Mountbatten who
was willing to take a more flexible approach to the AFPFL. In London,
a new Labour government, headed by Clement Attlee, was committed
to decolonization. Aung San, moreover, had serious disputes with the
communists, which led to their expulsion from the League in 1946; as
the Cold War heated up, his newly apparent anticommunist credentials
enhanced his credibility as a leader in the eyes of the West. In Decem-
ber 1946, Attlee invited a Burmese delegation, headed by Aung San, to
come to London to negotiate a final political settlement. On January 27,
1947, the Aung San–Attlee Agreement was signed, committing the par-
ties to full independence for Burma within a year, national elections
within four months, and British economic aid. When Constituent As-
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INTRODUCTION • 27

sembly elections were held in April 1947, the AFPFL won 173 out of
182 seats contested, outside of those reserved for ethnic minorities.
The London agreement also called for integration of the Frontier Ar-
eas with Burma Proper, which proved to be an intractable, “no-win” is-
sue. A Karen Goodwill Mission had gone to London in 1946 to argue
for an independent “Karen country,” including large areas of Pegu and
Tenasserim Divisions, but it was ignored by the Clement Attlee gov-
ernment. H. N. C. Stevenson, director of the Frontier Areas Adminis-
tration, proposed an arrangement, the United Frontier Union, through
which the border peoples would be included in a single administrative
entity, separate from Burma Proper and under some form of British tute-
lage. This the AFPFL adamantly opposed. For Burman nationalists, the
integration of Burma Proper and the minority peoples, an end to “divide
and rule,” was a non-negotiable demand; because of the impending in-
dependence of India, London did not have the Indian Army at its dis-
posal to handle civil unrest and was in no position to disagree.
Fortunately, Aung San, essentially a modern-minded man who, unlike
many of his military successors, had no feelings of nostalgia for old
Burman conqueror-kings, was willing to be open-minded in responding
to the concerns of Frontier Area communities. At a conference held at
Panglong in Shan State on February 7–12, 1947, he and Shan, Kachin,
and Chin leaders reached a consensus on guarantees of equality and full
citizen rights for Frontier Area peoples, including the principle that “if
Burma receives one kyat, you will also get one kyat”—referring to past
economic neglect of the upland areas. These commitments were em-
bodied in the 1947 Constitution, which established a semifederal sys-
tem with special ethnic minority states. But the most important Karen
organization, the Karen National Union, adopted a policy of determined
noncooperation with the AFPFL, and smaller border area groups, such
as the Was and Karennis, had not been represented at Panglong.
On the morning of July 19, 1947, gunmen acting on the orders of U
Saw entered the Secretariat Building in downtown Rangoon and assas-
sinated Aung San and members of his cabinet, the Executive Council,
an event observed in Burma today as Martyrs’ Day. This irrational act
(U Saw had apparently convinced himself that with Aung San dead, the
British would appoint him head of the interim government, enabling
him to achieve his ambition of becoming prime minister) was a terrible
national tragedy, reflecting the violence that had become endemic in the
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28 • INTRODUCTION

country during and after the war and removing the one Burman leader
who had won the trust of the minorities. Aung San’s words—“It will not
be feasible for us to set up a Unitary State. We must set up a Union with
properly regulated provisions as should be made to safeguard the rights
of the National Minorities. We must take care that ‘United we stand’ not
‘United we fall’.”—proved prophetic as the country settled into a tragic
pattern of military-promoted Burman chauvinism and border area in-
surgency, especially after 1962.
After the assassination, Governor Rance appointed U Nu as Aung
San’s successor. (U Saw and his accomplices were arrested, tried, and
executed the following year.) When Burma became independent from
British rule on January 4, 1948, U Nu became the country’s first prime
minister.

The Parliamentary Period, 1948–1962

Almost immediately following independence, U Nu’s government
was beset by “multicolored” insurgencies: On March 28, the main-
stream of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), led by Thakin Than
Tun and known as the “White Flags,” went underground (Thakin Soe’s
“Red Flag” communists had started their revolutionary struggle in
1946, based in the Arakan Yoma and the Irrawaddy Delta); they were
joined by the “White Band” faction of the People’s Volunteer Organi-
zation in late July. Communists and their sympathizers occupied key
points in the Pegu Yoma and the Sittang Valley, and party cadres began
land redistribution at Pyinmana in what is now Mandalay Division. The
government’s already-desperate situation worsened when Karen units
of the Burma Army, who along with the Kachin units had been indis-
pensable in fighting the communists, mutinied in January 1949; bitter
fighting broke out between the rump of the armed forces still loyal to U
Nu and the Karen National Defence Organization (KNDO) at Insein,
just north of Rangoon, and combined CPB and KNDO forces captured
Mandalay in March. These were the days of the “six-mile U Nu gov-
ernment,” when the central authorities controlled little territory outside
of central Rangoon. The Karen National Union, bitter over the Attlee
government’s desertion of them in 1947, had not succeeded in getting
satisfactory terms on a separate state from U Nu’s government and was
willing to carve it out by force.
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INTRODUCTION • 29

In mid-1949, the tide began to turn in favor of the government as

rebel-held cities and towns in central Burma, including Mandalay, were
recaptured. The following year, the army captured the Karen “capital”
at Toungoo, and the KNDO was driven across the Salween River to its
east bank. But the “multicolored insurgencies” left an indelible mark on
Burmese politics. Following the KNU/KNDO uprising in January 1949,
armed forces commander General Smith Dun and fellow Karen officers
were obliged to retire; most Karen and other ethnic minority troops had
gone over to the rebels. The great majority of officers and men who re-
mained loyal to the government were Burmans, commanded by General
Ne Win, Smith Dun’s successor. Thus, the mixed, multiethnic army es-
tablished by the British in 1945 was in rather short order replaced by a
monoethnic, Burman one, especially on the command level. Moreover,
Ne Win mobilized Burman sitwundan, local militias or territorial
armies, to fight the rebels in central Burma and to defend the capital.
During the 1950s, Ne Win and his fellow officers carried out both
“Burmanization” of the Tatmadaw and its development as an au-
tonomous political force. Because Prime Minister U Nu depended on the
army for his government’s survival, he was in no position to curb its
growing power as a “state within a state.” This was especially true after
the country faced a new crisis: the 1950 incursion of Kuomintang (Guo-
mindang) troops into the hills around Keng Tung in Shan State where,
with American aid, they attempted to carry out military operations
against the Chinese Communists in Yunnan Province. By 1953, they and
their Shan auxiliaries numbered 12,000 and had become deeply involved
in the local opium trade. Shan State, which had largely escaped the dev-
astation of war in 1941–1945, became Burma’s major battlefield. More
than 80 percent of government troops were sent to fight there, and Shan
civilians suffered from harsh army pacification measures.
During 1948–1958, Burma had parliamentary government. In the
elections of 1951–1952 and 1956, the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom
League won solid majorities. Democratic freedoms, including freedom
of the press (there were 56 newspapers, in Burmese and other lan-
guages), were largely respected, despite the countrywide insurrections.
Under the 1947 Constitution, ethnic minority states for the Kachins,
Shans, Karennis, and (after 1952) Karens had their own legislatures, but
relations between the states and the central government were “federal in
theory but unitary in practice.” By the late 1950s, movements for a
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30 • INTRODUCTION

more genuine federal system emerged among Shan and other minority
leaders.
U Nu was a socialist, though not a Marxist, and the economy was a
mixed one, including state-owned enterprises and private firms, though
the principal foreign-owned firms, such as Burmah Oil and Steel Broth-
ers, were obliged to enter into joint ventures with the government. Land
reform was carried out in rural areas, and large, absentee-owned estates
were declared illegal. The prime minister’s foreign policy was based on
the principles of neutrality and nonalignment: Burma was the first non-
communist state to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1949,
but it also had amicable relations with Western countries and Japan,
though U.S. support for the Kuomintang intruders in Shan State caused
a crisis in Rangoon–Washington relations. Burma received significant
amounts of official development assistance (ODA), especially from
Japan in the form of war reparations, but also from Western countries
and the Soviet Union.
The failure of democracy in Burma following its brief flourishing in
the 1950s is often attributed to the overweening ambition of Ne Win,
who, assisted by able advisors, such as Brigadier Aung Gyi, transformed
the Tatmadaw into a modern armed force, promoted strong “nation-
building” consciousness among its officers (despite the army’s politi-
cally neutral image), and presided over the emergence of a military-
owned economic empire, the Defence Services Institute, which
provided it with ample funds outside of official budgets. Long before
Ne Win’s coup d’état in March 1962, the top ranks of the army were
controlled by his cronies—especially those who had served under him
in the Fourth Burma Rifles. Organizationally, the Tatmadaw was also
becoming increasingly independent of civilian control.
But a stronger and more stable parliamentary government might have
been able to keep the army in its place. As things were, the Burmese po-
litical class was afflicted with corruption and factionalism. In early
1958, the AFPFL split into two factions: the “Clean AFPFL” loyal to U
Nu, and the larger “Stable AFPFL,” which supported Socialist Party
leaders U Ba Swe and U Kyaw Nyein. Both factions had armed sup-
porters outside the regular army: The Stable AFPFL commanded the al-
legiance of the Auxiliary Union Military Police, a paramilitary force,
and the “peace guerrillas” of the All-Burma Peasants’ Organization
were loyal to an associate of U Nu. The 1958 factional split caused a
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INTRODUCTION • 31

crisis on the local and national levels, because local political bosses and
their armed followers were aligned with one group or another. Burma
seemed again to be veering toward civil war.
On October 28, 1958, U Nu proposed in parliament that General Ne
Win be asked to head a “Caretaker Government,” which would hold
general elections in six months after restoring stability. Ne Win arrested
politicians, stepped up the suppression of insurgencies, evicted urban
squatters to remote “new towns,” and promoted efficiency in the civil
service. Middle-class Burmese were in some measure relieved by Ne
Win’s determination to impose stability in a top-down manner. But from
the perspective of history, the Caretaker Government period, which was
extended beyond the original six months in order to complete its tasks,
was a dress rehearsal not only for the Revolutionary Council established
by Ne Win in March 1962, but for the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC), which seized power in September 1988. The De-
fence Services Institute expanded its control over vital economic sec-
tors. Military officers were seconded to the civil service, where they
wielded considerable power, although they were not professionally
qualified. The Tatmadaw established a nationwide, local-level civic or-
ganization, the National Solidarity Association, which anticipated the
mass organizations of the Burma Socialist Programme Party era
(1962–1988) and the post-1988 SLORC’s Union Solidarity and Devel-
opment Association (USDA).
The promised election was held in February 1960, and U Nu’s
“Clean” faction won a landslide victory. Forming a new government in
April, he reorganized his followers as the Pyidaungsu (Union) Party.
Many voters had been won over by his promise to make Buddhism the
state religion. That issue, and the issue of federalism, were major pre-
occupations during his two years in power. In his later years, U Nu had
become a devout Buddhist, and sponsored the Sixth Great Buddhist
Council during 1954–1956 to celebrate the 2,500-year anniversary of
Gotama Buddha’s attainment of nibbana (nirvana). But his proposed
constitutional amendment to give the religion official status opened a
Pandora’s box of problems: Because it was widely popular among or-
dinary Burmese, the more militant members of the Sangha wanted to
use it to curb Muslim and Christian religious activities, which the toler-
ant U Nu resisted. Ethnic minority leaders, especially among the
Kachins, most of whom were Christian, were deeply troubled, worried
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32 • INTRODUCTION

that the end of Burma’s commitment to secularism would marginalize

their communities. However, the amendment was passed on August 26,
1961.

The First Military Government, 1962–1988

As mentioned, Tatmadaw operations in Shan State against the Kuom-
intang had caused great hardship for local people. The traditional rulers,
the sawbwas, had been powerless to stop the worst army abuses even be-
fore they formally relinquished their traditional authority in 1959. Shan
disaffection with the army and the central government was growing, and
in November of the same year, Shan rebels captured the garrison town
of Tangyan. Independent Burma’s first president, Sao Shwe Taik, former
sawbwa of the western Shan State of Yawnghwe, brought together Shan
and other ethnic minority leaders at Taunggyi in June 1961 to propose
constitutional changes to give the states greater autonomy. Out of this
grew the Federal Movement, an essentially elite-centered and moderate
initiative that U Nu recognized by sponsoring a Nationalities’ Seminar in
Rangoon to discuss constitutional proposals in February 1962. The Sem-
inar was still in progress when, on March 2, 1962, Tatmadaw units seized
strategic positions in the capital; arrested U Nu, other politicians, and mi-
nority leaders attending the seminar; and proclaimed a Revolutionary
Council (RC) under the chairmanship of General Ne Win. The 1947
Constitution was suspended and parliament dissolved. Burma’s short ex-
periment with parliamentary government was over.
Ne Win framed his reasons for overthrowing U Nu’s government in
terms of the extreme demands of the Federal Movement (though, in
fact, as mentioned, it called for only moderate constitutional change)
and the turmoil caused by the prime minister’s amendment making
Buddhism the state religion. It was claimed these phenomena imperiled
national unity, a persistent theme in the legitimizing of Burmese mili-
tary regimes in later years. But he and his fellow officers, men of
brigadier or colonel rank who formed the 17-member Revolutionary
Council (RC), also had ambitions to remake Burmese society: to re-
place “parliamentary democracy” with “socialist democracy.” In “The
Burmese Way to Socialism,” a policy statement published by the RC on
April 3, 1962, they expressed their commitment to building a socialist
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INTRODUCTION • 33

economy in which there would be scientific planning to fully utilize “all

the national productive forces” and an end to “the exploitation of man
by man.” “Socialist democracy” referred to the creation of a workers’
state in which “mass and class organizations” would uphold the new po-
litical order; the debt to the Soviet model was evident, though it was
only in February 1963, when Brigadier Aung Gyi, considered an eco-
nomic pragmatist, was removed from the RC, that it became apparent
that this model would be rigidly applied.
On July 4, 1962, the RC established its own party, the Burma Social-
ist Programme Party (BSPP, or Lanzin Party), which became the only
legal political party in March 1964 following decree of the Law to Pro-
tect National Solidarity. Over the next few years, Ne Win’s martial law
government devoted considerable resources to “party building,” con-
verting the BSPP from a small elite group, a “cadre party,” into a “mass
party” with hundreds of thousands of full and candidate party members,
which held its first Congress in June–July 1971.
The highest ranks of the BSPP were filled with military officers, ac-
tive or retired, and the military also controlled the public administration
through the Security and Administration Committees (SACs), which re-
placed regional (state and division) and local administrative bodies that
had functioned under the 1947 Constitution. At the apex of this military-
controlled hierarchy was the Central Security and Administration Com-
mittee in Rangoon, directly responsible to the RC. During the BSPP era,
administration came increasingly into the hands of untrained and often
poorly educated Tatmadaw men rather than professionally trained civil
servants or technocrats, with disastrous consequences for the quality of
governance. This was a continuation of the trend initiated during the
Caretaker Government period.
Although Ne Win’s “revolution” was built upon a Soviet-style power
structure, it lacked the totalitarian aspirations of Stalin, Mao Zedong, or
Pol Pot: to fundamentally transform society. No attempt was made to
collectivize agriculture, which in the history of both Russia and China
had caused the most violent “class struggle,” with millions of deaths.
All land in principle was owned by the state, but family farmers were
allowed to retain and cultivate their plots (though low state prices, es-
pecially for rice, depressed rural standards of living and created a flour-
ishing black market). Ne Win attempted to assert state control over the
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34 • INTRODUCTION

sometimes unruly Sangha, but unlike Stalin or Mao, he was not antire-
ligious; by the 1980s, he had fitted himself into the role of a traditional
pagoda-building king, sponsoring construction of the Maha Wizaya
Pagoda, adjacent to the Shwe Dagon in Rangoon. Thus, Burma was
spared a “cultural revolution” aimed at destroying its traditional values
and cultural heritage. Furthermore, Ne Win did not attempt to create a
personality cult centered on himself, like Mao or North Korea’s Kim Il
Sung, though his rule was highly personal and often arbitrary, misin-
formed, and swayed by bad temper and astrological predictions. The of-
ficial ideology was considerably expanded through publication in 1963
of a long treatise, The System of Correlation of Man and His Environ-
ment, which was socialist but non-Marxist, with Buddhist metaphysical
elements and a dash of humanism as expressed in the aphorism, “man
matters most.”
But dissent was systematically repressed. The state took over control
of the media, and private newspapers, like The Nation, were closed
down. All books and magazines were subject to censorship by the Press
Scrutiny Board (PSB), which, according to 1975 guidelines, prohibited
publication of items deemed “harmful to national solidarity and unity.”
This forced publishers to exercise self-censorship, which had a suffo-
cating effect on Burmese literature. In late April 1965, 92 Buddhist
monks were arrested for opposing a government plan to establish a na-
tionwide Sangha organization and issue identity cards for monks. But
outside of military operations against ethnic and communist insurgents,
the state took its harshest measures against student activists. On July 7,
1962, University of Rangoon students demonstrated over campus is-
sues, and Tatmadaw troops were ordered to fire on them point-blank;
according to official figures, 15 students were killed, though the actual
number may have been in the hundreds. Early in the morning on the fol-
lowing day, troops blew up the historic Rangoon University Students
Union building, allegedly on orders from Ne Win.
The mid- and late 1960s witnessed a wave of nationalizations affect-
ing enterprises large and small, domestic and foreign. In October 1963,
the RC decreed the Enterprises Nationalization Law, which gave the
government the authority to take over any company. By the end of the
decade, some 15,000 enterprises had passed from private to state hands,
including those owned by South Asian businesspeople, tens of thou-
sands of whom were bankrupted and forced to leave the country, caus-
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INTRODUCTION • 35

ing a brief diplomatic crisis with India. The anti-Chinese riots of June
1967 drove out many overseas Chinese entrepreneurs. Thus, the eco-
nomic history of post-1962 Burma resembled that of Uganda, where the
dictator Idi Amin expelled the Indian business class, rather than Thai-
land, Indonesia, or Malaysia, where nonindigenous Asians contributed
tremendously to economic growth. The lively shops and bazaars that
typify Southeast Asian commercial spaces were not entirely eliminated;
but in the “official” economy, retail trade was dominated by branches of
the state-owned People’s Stores Corporation, which became synony-
mous for poor service and empty shelves. By 1970, Rangoon, once one
of Southeast Asia’s most sophisticated cities, had become dreary and
threadbare.
Socialist policy emphasized import substitution—the development of
a domestic industrial economy to overcome the contradictions of colo-
nial dependency—including the operation of a steel mill, but in 1971
the first congress of the ruling party adopted a comprehensive “Long
Term and Short Term Economic Policies of the BSPP” that outlined a
20-year plan and shifted emphasis from industry to the export of agri-
cultural commodities, a wise move because this was still Burma’s
strongest sector. Yet agriculture was afflicted by low state prices for sta-
ple goods, an inefficient, state-run distribution system, and the vagaries
of the yearly monsoon cycle. Farmers sought to boost their sagging in-
comes by holding back as much of their harvest as possible and selling
it on the black market. Consumers, especially in urban areas, began ex-
periencing food shortages for the first time in the country’s modern his-
tory. These shortages, coupled with inflation that reflected growing eco-
nomic irrationalities, led to urban unrest, beginning in 1967 with the
anti-Chinese riots.
Economic reform, frequently promised by Ne Win, amounted to lit-
tle more than tinkering because he and his military colleagues refused to
abandon the belief that state initiatives rather than market forces should
determine the economy’s direction. Although introduction of high-yield
varieties of rice in the mid-1970s was the major factor in impressive
economic growth at that time, such growth could not be sustained. At
all times, the black market overshadowed the official economy in dy-
namism and sometimes size. It took various forms: Apart from the un-
derground trade in rice and other necessities, military officers and BSPP
cadres, having privileged access to goods at low “official” prices, sold
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36 • INTRODUCTION

them at a huge profit to black market entrepreneurs, supplementing

their meager salaries. There was also large-scale trade on the country’s
borders, especially with Thailand. Karen and Mon insurgents controlled
border trading posts, especially at Three Pagodas Pass, where consumer
goods destined for the domestic market entered and raw materials from
Burma were exported. A profitable economy based on the export of opi-
ates took root in Shan and Kachin States, involving a bewildering array
of shady characters, from local warlords such as Olive Yang, “war lady”
of Kokang, and the Shan-Chinese Khun Sa, to Kuomintang veterans
who had forsaken the fight against communism in the search for quick
profits, and an international network of drug dealers who imported the
drugs from the “Golden Triangle” to Thailand and beyond.
By the late 1970s, Burma had partially modified its policy of eco-
nomic self-reliance and was receiving hundreds of millions of U.S. dol-
lars in the form of ODA, mostly from Japan and West Germany but also
from other Western countries and multilateral lenders such as the Asian
Development Bank. Much of this aid was predicated on promises of
economic reform that failed to materialize. Ne Win accepted such aid,
mostly in the form of concessional loans, reluctantly, but apparently
thought it a relatively risk-free source of investment that would keep his
regime afloat.
During 1962–1988, Burma’s foreign policy remained committed to
nonalignment and promoting friendly relations, if possible, with all
countries. The single greatest diplomatic crisis came in the aftermath of
the 1967 anti-Chinese riots. Beijing, radicalized by the Cultural Revo-
lution and indignant over the death of a Chinese embassy official at the
hands of a Rangoon mob, recalled its ambassador. The Chinese media
called for the overthrow of Ne Win’s “fascist” regime. In January 1968,
several hundred troops of the Communist Party of Burma, led by Kachin
commander Naw Seng, crossed the border and established a “liberated
area” in northeastern Shan State, which soon became the center of the
largest, best-equipped, and best-organized insurgency fighting the cen-
tral government. Generously backed by China, the CPB’s People’s
Army had as many as 15,000 mostly ethnic minority soldiers and occu-
pied extensive territories, including the opium-rich Wa states and
Kokang. Although Rangoon–Beijing relations were normalized by
1971, the CPB’s northeastern command remained a thorn in the side of
the Burmese government until its collapse in 1989.
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INTRODUCTION • 37

A second theme of Ne Win’s foreign policy was isolationism. Cul-

tural and educational relations with Western countries were severed, in-
cluding student and faculty exchanges under the U.S. Fulbright Pro-
gram; the educational curriculum on all levels was “Burmanized”
(meaning that learning English was downgraded); and foreign mission-
aries were expelled, their schools taken over by the state. Foreign schol-
ars and tourists were kept out, though the government introduced a
seven-day tourist visa in 1970 to generate foreign exchange. Burma
showed no interest in joining the Association of Southeast Asian Na-
tions (ASEAN), founded in 1967, because most of its member nations
had Western military bases on their soil. Relations with Thailand were
strained because the anticommunist Thai government, suspicious of the
socialist regime in Rangoon, tolerated the presence of Karen, Mon, and
other insurgents on its side of the poorly defined border.
In 1963, Ne Win invited representatives of insurgent groups to come
to Rangoon for negotiations, but the peace talks failed. By the early
1980s, over 20 major communist, ethnic nationalist, and warlord
armed groups operated in what had been the Frontier Areas during the
colonial era. Communist bases in central Burma had been shut down
by the Tatmadaw by the mid-1970s, but the “liberated area” along the
China border remained intact despite repeated army campaigns, in
which government troops suffered heavy casualties and often fought
with weapons inferior to those of the communists. The most important
noncommunist, ethnic nationalist groups (whose objectives were inde-
pendence, or at least autonomy, for their people) were the Karen Na-
tional Union, New Mon State Party, Karenni National Progress Party,
and Kachin Independence Organization/Army, whose “liberated areas”
were also extensive. Smaller groups claimed to represent the aspira-
tions of the Shans, Nagas, Chins, Pa-Os, and other groups. Warlord
armies could be defined as those who had no political aims, despite of-
ten impressive titles, and whose leaders sought to enrich themselves
through the opium trade. These included remnants of the Chinese Ir-
regular Forces (the Kuomintang); troops loyal to Lo Hsing-han, nick-
named “king of the Golden Triangle”; and the Shan United Army (later
the Mong Tai Army), commanded by Khun Sa, who inherited the title
from Lo after the latter was arrested and imprisoned in 1973. Between
government-controlled areas in the coastal and central plain areas (the
colonial-era “Burma Proper”) and insurgent-controlled territories in
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38 • INTRODUCTION

the old Frontier Areas, existed a rough equilibrium; the Tatmadaw was
not strong or well-equipped enough to defeat the armed groups, but the
latter repeatedly failed to form a strong united front and had no reach
inside central Burma. During the massive prodemocracy movement of
1988, the insurgents were bystanders to momentous events that
changed Burma’s history.
On January 3, 1974, a new constitution was promulgated, establishing
the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, a highly centralized,
BSPP-dominated state that remained committed to “socialist democ-
racy” and established a system of People’s Councils on the state/division
and local levels, which were chosen in Soviet-style, rubber-stamp elec-
tions. During the mid-1970s, however, Ne Win’s government faced
some of its worst crises: labor strikes in May–June 1974, caused in large
part to food shortages; the U Thant Incident of December 1974, which
marked a revival in student and monk activism that was brutally sup-
pressed by the army; and a coup d’état attempt by young officers intent
on overthrowing the socialist system in 1976. There were also extensive
purges of the BSPP hierarchy. In May 1983, the powerful head of mili-
tary intelligence, Tin Oo, considered Ne Win’s possible successor, was
cashiered and arrested.
Ne Win, 70 years old in 1981, retired as president of Burma in that
year but retained the post of BSPP chairman. The power structure that he
had built up, centered on his loyal subordinates in the Tatmadaw, had
never been characterized by commitment or effectiveness, and the “Old
Man” (as he was widely known) increasingly devoted himself to yedaya
(magic to avoid misfortune), pagoda-building, and thoughts of his im-
pending mortality. A new economic crisis loomed in the mid-1980s,
marked by recurrent food shortages, rampant inflation, and foreign debts
that could not be serviced. Burma’s leader admitted in August 1987 that
serious policy mistakes had been made, hinting that genuine reform
might be in order. But the following month he decreed demonetization
of the country’s currency without compensation in order to strike a mor-
tal blow at “economic insurgents” (the black market); in fact, ordinary
Burmese of all classes suffered because they kept much of their savings
in cash rather than in bank accounts. The demonetization measure
sparked the first student demonstrations since the 1970s and opened the
way for the heroic but tragically thwarted popular movement of 1988.
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INTRODUCTION • 39

1988: People’s Power and the SLORC

The year 1988 represents a turning point in Burma’s modern history,
for several reasons. First, it was—initially for student activists but then
for a growing proportion, possibly a majority, of the general population in
central Burma—a dramatic reenactment of the “revolutionary national-
ism” of the 1930s. The students and their supporters designated them-
selves Aung San’s spiritual heirs, and the fortuitous appearance of Aung
San Suu Kyi on the scene in summer 1988 galvanized their commitment
to what she called “the second struggle for national independence,” this
time against the much-hated Ne Win regime. Second, it brought about the
demise of Burmese-style socialism, though not the end of military rule.
On September 18, a new martial law regime, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC), seized power and initiated significant
changes in policy: promotion of private foreign investment and economic
liberalization, abandonment of neutrality through cultivation of close ties
with the People’s Republic of China, and the signing of cease-fires with
ethnic and former communist armed groups that radically changed con-
ditions in many of the border areas, especially in northeastern Shan State.
Third, in the new post–Cold War world, the political crisis in this for-
merly isolated and obscure country attracted sustained international at-
tention, in large measure because of the international stature of Aung San
Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Against a background of growing economic insecurity, made worse
by the September 1987 demonetization, the popular uprising of 1988
began with a small incident: a March 12 brawl in a teashop in Insein
Township, Rangoon, between Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT)
students and local youths. According to the most widely accepted ac-
count, one of the youths injured a student and was arrested but was
later released because his father was a member of the local People’s
Council. On the next day was a protest march by several hundred RIT
students. Riot Police (Lon Htein) shot and killed several of them, in-
cluding Maung Phone Maw, who became a student martyr comparable
to Bo Aung Gyaw, mortally injured by British colonial police in a De-
cember 1938 demonstration. The protest soon spread to other cam-
puses, and on March 16 about a thousand students began a march from
the Main Campus of Rangoon University to RIT; however, they were
surrounded by Riot Police and Tatmadaw troops near the White Bridge,
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40 • INTRODUCTION

an embankment on the west shore of Inya Lake. The Riot Police at-
tacked, and as many as 300 students were killed, including many
drowned in the lake. Hundreds of other demonstrators were jailed, to
face torture and abuse. Demonstrations continued on March 18 in
downtown Rangoon.
The government’s response to the unrest seems almost to have been
calculated to inflame popular rage. It is difficult to comprehend why,
facing protests that were sometimes unruly but in general peaceful, the
Riot Police and later the Tatmadaw consistently employed lethal force,
often firing point-blank into crowds. The students were for the most part
the sons and daughters of the middle class and the elite, including mil-
itary families. Their supporters among the townspeople of Rangoon and
other cities were mostly Burmans or Burmese lowlanders, who shared
with the army and BSPP leadership the same ethnic and religious iden-
tities. Poor training and a rigid command structure may be partial ex-
planations. But more fundamentally, the lack of restraint with which the
authorities crushed the protests showed that Burma’s basic political
problem was not its plurality of ethnic and religious groups who en-
dangered national unity, for they were not significantly involved in the
events of 1988, but a leadership that was radically out of touch with its
people and a state that refused to share power or concede political space
to any social group outside itself. In a very real sense, the State waged
war against Society in 1988.
Moreover, the quality of governance was affected by the intensely hi-
erarchical and centralized nature of state power since 1962: The BSPP
state depended on Ne Win’s personal brand of leadership rather than co-
herent policies in order to operate. The well-worn principle of lu kaun,
lu taw (“good people before smart people”) meant that the “Old Man,”
fearing challenges to his own authority, consistently chose mediocre but
loyal subordinates for leadership positions, such as post-1981 President
San Yu. Talented men, such as the pragmatist Brigadier Aung Gyi or the
reform-minded defense minister, Tin U, were purged. Moreover, to pro-
tect themselves from his hot-tempered wrath and possible demotion, Ne
Win’s subordinates brought him only good news about conditions in-
side the country. Thus Ne Win, who, like France’s King Louis XIV,
could truthfully say “l’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”), governed in a
manner that was affected not only by his erratic temper but also by pro-
found ignorance of real conditions. Though the March violence re-
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INTRODUCTION • 41

flected a major national crisis, Ne Win went on his customary vacation

in Europe on April 11, not returning until May 26.
The 1988 uprising was a battle for information as well as control of the
streets of Rangoon and other cities. On March 17, 1988, the government
established a committee to carry out an inquiry into the initial shootings
of RIT students, but when its report was published in May, citizens con-
sidered it a whitewash. The state media, including the newspaper Loketha
Pyithu Nezin (Working People’s Daily) and the Burma Broadcasting Ser-
vice, made no mention of the killings. Ordinary Burmese people relied on
three sources for uncensored information: foreign radio broadcasts, espe-
cially the Burmese service of the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC); hushed conversations in tea shops, a traditional source of unau-
thorized information; and letters written by Aung Gyi to Ne Win, espe-
cially one in June 1988 describing in detail the events of March, includ-
ing the White Bridge incident, which were photocopied and widely
distributed. Foreign broadcasts, including those from the BBC, Voice of
America, and All India Radio, became so popular that after the SLORC
seized power, it published a book, Skyful of Lies, that accused the over-
seas media of trying to destroy national unity. As the disparity between
official and nonofficial sources of information grew, public trust in the
government evaporated. When a bloody clash broke out near Rangoon’s
Myeinigone Market on June 21, townspeople joined with student activists
in fighting the Riot Police—a significant turning point.
The Extraordinary Congress of the BSPP, convened on July 23, 1988,
was an opportunity for the leadership to show its willingness to com-
promise with popular sentiment. Ne Win proposed holding a referen-
dum on whether a multiparty system should replace the one-party state,
but the party delegates turned it down in favor of an economic reform
program. In his long and rambling speech on July 23, the BSPP chair-
man made an unveiled threat that further inflamed popular sentiment:
“If in future there are mob disturbances, if the army shoots, it hits—
there is no firing into the air to scare.” On July 26, the party central
committee, undoubtedly with Ne Win’s approval, chose as Ne Win’s
successor as BSPP chairman Sein Lwin, a loyal crony who had earned
the nickname “Butcher of Rangoon” because of his command of the
Riot Police during the March and June incidents. On the following day,
Sein Lwin was also designated Burma’s president by the Pyithu Hlut-
taw (or People’s Assembly).
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42 • INTRODUCTION

His promotion to the country’s two top posts surprised and enraged
the people. Student activists declared that a general strike would be held
on August 8, 1988, the “four eights,” a date with numerological signif-
icance connected to the collapse of royal dynasties. At eight o’clock in
the morning of the designated day, hundreds of thousands of people
marched to city centers in Rangoon, Mandalay, Sagaing, and elsewhere,
carrying banners and portraits of Aung San and calling for Sein Lwin’s
resignation. Because martial law had been declared in Rangoon, the
Tatmadaw took over responsibility for public order from the Riot Po-
lice. The demonstrations began in a carnival atmosphere, as groups of
citizens from practically every city neighborhood in Rangoon partici-
pated. But the army began shooting at the amassed demonstrators late
on the evening of the eighth, in front of the Sule Pagoda and town hall,
and the bloodshed continued until August 12, when Sein Lwin resigned.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San’s 43-year-old daughter, had lived
abroad for many years but had returned to Burma in early 1988 to take
care of her ailing mother. She assumed a leading role in the national cri-
sis after giving a speech on the western slope of the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda hill on August 26, attended by hundreds of thousands of Ran-
goon citizens. Daw Suu Kyi’s rapid rise to a preeminent position inside
the opposition reflected both the continued appeal of her father and the
lack of viable alternatives among the pre-1962 political establishment,
including former prime minister U Nu, who had hopes, ultimately
thwarted, of making a comeback. Only Daw Suu Kyi and some student
activist leaders, especially Min Ko Naing, had sustained popular appeal.
During August and the first half of September, conditions throughout
central Burma were extremely unsettled. Demonstrations continued in
urban areas, public services ground to a halt, and foreign embassies
urged their nationals to evacuate. On August 19, Dr. Maung Maung was
appointed BSPP chairman and Burma’s president. At a second Extraor-
dinary BSPP Congress held on September 10, he promised the adoption
of a multiparty democratic system to replace the one-party state. Two
days later, Aung San Suu Kyi, Tin U (the former defense minister with
a reputation as a reformist), and Aung Gyi formed a coalition, advocat-
ing the establishment of an interim government. This later became the
National League for Democracy.
In the late afternoon of September 18, the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council, a junta composed of 19 officers of general, brigadier, and
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INTRODUCTION • 43

colonel rank headed by defense minister General Saw Maung, seized

power. This action was often described as a “coup d’état” like Ne Win’s
original coup in March 1962, but this was not entirely accurate. After
martial law was suspended in Rangoon on August 24, troops were with-
drawn from the city, and the government maintained a low profile. Con-
ditions inside the capital city were chaotic—government agents provo-
cateurs carried out sabotage, and neighborhoods barricaded themselves
and established self-defense committees—but this was also a time of
unprecedented freedom during which a large number of uncensored
street publications appeared, new democratic organizations were estab-
lished, and the fragile beginnings of a new civil society could be seen.
While this was going on, Ne Win and his subordinates made plans to re-
capture power. Thus, the establishment of the SLORC was not the co-
ercive replacement of one government by another but the rescue of the
old military power structure, the “army state,” by a younger generation
of hard-line generals. Although the details of the planning for the
SLORC are unclear, it had Ne Win’s blessing.

Burma under the SLORC and SPDC

The SLORC imposed order with ruthless efficiency. It is estimated
that at least 1,000 Rangoon demonstrators lost their lives in the days fol-
lowing its inception. Government institutions as defined by the 1974
Constitution, including the People’s Assembly (Pyithu Hluttaw) and re-
gional and local bodies, were dissolved and replaced by state/division
and township Law and Order Restoration Committees (LORCs) headed
by and composed of military officers, analogous to the RC-era SACs.
Regime spokesmen described the junta as a temporary government that
would oversee the transition from “socialist democracy” to “multiparty
democracy,” just as the Revolutionary Council had managed the transi-
tion from “parliamentary democracy” to “socialist democracy.” Given
the longevity of the RC, almost 12 years, there was no reason to believe
the SLORC was in any hurry to establish a new democratic, civilian
government. But one of the few nonmilitary institutions allowed to sur-
vive the imposition of a martial law regime was the oddly named Elec-
tions Commission for Holding Democratic Multi-party General Elec-
tions. In its first decree on September 18, the SLORC announced its
determination to hold successful elections. A day later, the 1964 Law to
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44 • INTRODUCTION

Safeguard National Solidarity, which recognized the BSPP as the only

political party, was repealed, and on September 27 the Political Party
Registration Law was enacted, establishing the legal framework
through which new parties could be organized. By mid-1989, some 233
parties had been established. Most of these were small and often whim-
sical groups, such as the Ever-Green Young Men’s Association; how-
ever, the National League for Democracy (NLD) drew supporters be-
cause of the popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi, and the National Unity
Party (NUP), the reorganized Burma Socialist Programme Party, still
had considerable funds and a network of cadres left over from before
the SLORC takeover. When the general election was held on May 27,
1990, only 93 parties participated, the rest having been “deregistered”
by the Election Commission.
For the SLORC, the election was to serve the function of enhancing
its legitimacy. Saw Maung and his fellow generals probably expected
either that the voters, intimidated by armed force, would support the
NUP, or that seats in the new Pyithu Hluttaw would be divided among
a large number of small parties. In either case, the elected representa-
tives would offer proof of Burma’s democratic credentials without con-
stituting an effective opposition. Because the military regime had been
criticized for its human rights abuses by Western governments, which
cut off flows of ODA, successful completion of the balloting could re-
sult in such aid flows being restored, a major incentive for the cash-
starved regime. Indeed, after the junta announced a schedule for the
election in early 1989, the Japanese government formally recognized
the SLORC and restarted a portion of its massive official development
assistance program that had been suspended the previous year.
The actual results of the May 27 election, which most observers
agree was free and fair, apparently came as a great surprise to the junta:
The NLD won 59.9 percent of the vote and 392 of 485 single-seat con-
stituencies contested, despite the fact that Daw Suu Kyi was under
house arrest and barred from running in a constituency. Three ethnic mi-
nority parties, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the Arakan
Democracy League, and the Mon National Democratic Front, won 23,
11, and 5 seats, respectively. The “progovernment” NUP won only 21.2
percent of the vote and 10 seats. However, the SLORC was not entirely
unprepared for this outcome. In the run-up to the election, regime
spokesmen had adopted an ambiguous stance toward the election’s ac-
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INTRODUCTION • 45

tual purpose: Was it to choose members of the People’s Assembly, who

would form a government? Or would the elected representatives play
some role in drafting a new constitution? By the summer of 1990, it had
become apparent that the first option was out of the question. In July,
the junta issued SLORC Announcement No. 1/90, which asserted that a
civilian government could not be established until a new constitution
was drafted, and that the martial law regime exercised exclusively the
powers of government. In 1992, the SLORC established a constitutional
drafting body, the National Convention, which met for the first time in
January 1993. Since then, it has convened intermittently; because it had
not completed a constitutional draft by mid-2005 indicates that the
junta, now known as the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC), has judged that the time is not ripe for a political transition.
Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest by the junta on July
20, 1989; released in July 1995 (a period of confinement just under six
years); confined again between September 2000 and May 2002; and be-
gan her third term of house arrest following the “Black Friday” incident
of May 30, 2003, in which she and her supporters were attacked by
proregime mobs in Sagaing Division, an incident that aroused interna-
tional condemnation and resulted in severe economic sanctions on the
part of the United States. Although foreign parties, particularly
Malaysia, attempted to initiate dialogue between Daw Suu Kyi and the
junta, their efforts failed to bear fruit. When free from confinement in
1995–2000 and 2002–2003, Daw Suu Kyi valiantly attempted to reju-
venate her party and the democratic spirit that had been expressed in
May 1990. But the sheer dead weight of military coercion blocked any
sort of progress; in 2005, the NLD was desperately struggling for sur-
vival, and a peaceful settlement of the country’s political crisis re-
mained beyond reach. The National Convention reconvened in May
2004 to draft a constitution that would enshrine military domination of
the political system. Neither the NLD nor the second-largest opposition
party, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, attended the con-
vention.
The internal dynamics of the post-1988 junta remain largely opaque.
Burma watchers have detected personal and worldview differences be-
tween the top military figures. SLORC/SPDC chairman Senior General
Than Shwe (who replaced the erratic Saw Maung in April 1992) and
vice-chairman General Maung Aye, both part of the regular combat
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46 • INTRODUCTION

army, are considered conservative, hard line in dealing with the opposi-
tion, and tending toward isolationism; while SLORC/SPDC Secretary-
1 Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, director of military intelligence (a
former Ne Win protégé who was appointed to this post in 1984) was
more flexible, interested in promoting ties with foreign countries and
taking a more accommodating (or perhaps more manipulative) ap-
proach toward the NLD. But Khin Nyunt was arrested in October 2004,
charged with corruption and attempting to split the Tatmadaw, and was
sentenced to 44 years in jail, suspended. His military intelligence sub-
ordinates were also arrested or forced into retirement.
What seems apparent is that the junta has achieved “system mainte-
nance”; that is, individual generals have been removed, but the unity of
the Tatmadaw top command has been preserved, and Than Shwe, an un-
charismatic, frequently underestimated figure, has managed to consoli-
date personal control at the top, becoming Ne Win’s successor as
“Number One.” In November 1997, the SLORC was reorganized as the
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Although Than Shwe,
Maung Aye, and Khin Nyunt retained their positions, other SLORC
generals were retired, including those who had garnered a reputation for
corruption. Through its control of a “state capitalist” economy, espe-
cially the sale of natural resources, such as natural gas, to neighboring
countries, the SPDC and the Tatmadaw officer corps have evolved into
a rentier class that, in contrast to the pre-1988 Tatmadaw, enjoys little
esteem among the general population but is more deeply entrenched in
power than ever before.
SLORC/SPDC policies could be characterized as combining the au-
thoritarian proclivities of the Ne Win era—suppression of opposition,
rigid censorship, and control of information—with controlled global-
ization, in a manner similar to that of Burma’s huge northern neighbor,
China. The government has encouraged foreign tourism, including the
construction of international class hotels and promotion of “Visit Myan-
mar [Burma] Year” in 1996–1997; foreign private investment has been
welcomed with the decree of a post-1988 legal regime facilitating the
participation of wholly owned foreign enterprises and foreign–local
joint ventures in the economy; Burma joined the Association of South-
east Asian Nations in July 1997; there are plans to connect Burma to the
Asian Highway, linking the country overland with Thailand, Indochina,
and India; and Burma is part of the Great Mekong Subregion develop-
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INTRODUCTION • 47

ment project that is being promoted by the Asian Development Bank.

Most rural areas in Burma remain largely unaffected by globalization,
but Rangoon and other urban areas increasingly resemble the commer-
cialized urban spaces found in Bangkok, Singapore, or Ho Chi Minh
City.
After 1988, SLORC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt established close and
friendly ties with the People’s Republic of China. Many observers ar-
gue that without China’s economic, military, and diplomatic support
(including the sale of weapons), the junta would have had a much more
difficult time resisting Western sanctions or, conversely, that had China
exerted pressure on the junta to liberalize, it would have done so. Some
have accused China of turning Burma into an economic “neo-colony,”
where the pattern of the import of manufactured goods and export of
raw materials has been reinstated on a large scale. But the SPDC has
succeeded in promoting amicable relations with all its neighbors: India,
Bangladesh, Thailand, and other members of ASEAN. In 1988, the In-
dian government was strongly critical of the SLORC’s human rights
abuses, but in more recent years ties have greatly improved, including
cooperation in suppressing insurgents and building highways and other
infrastructure in the India–Burma border area. Compared to the Ne Win
era, the region where Burma is located is increasingly stable, prosper-
ous, and economically integrated. This has benefited the SPDC, if not
necessarily Burma’s people.
The situation in Burma’s former Frontier Areas was radically trans-
formed by Khin Nyunt’s policy of signing cease-fires with armed
groups, beginning with the ethnic components of the Communist Party
of Burma after its breakup in 1989. By 1997, cease-fires had been
signed with 22 major and minor groups, including the Kachin Indepen-
dence Organization and Khun Sa’s drug-financed Mong Tai Army. This
enabled the Tatmadaw to undermine the Democratic Alliance of Burma,
a post-1988 united front of ethnic and Burmese student groups, and fo-
cus its armed might on the holdouts, especially the Karen National
Union, resulting in the fall of KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in Jan-
uary 1995. Enjoying substantial autonomy, the United Wa State Army
had emerged as the most powerful cease-fire group by the mid-1990s,
and was exporting massive amounts of opiates and amphetamines to
Thailand and China from processing centers in Shan State. For a time,
Burma had the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest single
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48 • INTRODUCTION

source of opiates, although it was surpassed by Afghanistan after the

fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
In early November 2005, the State Peace and Development Council
began relocating civil servants to a heavily fortified compound located
outside of Pyinmana, in southern Mandalay Division, a site that would
replace Rangoon not only as military headquarters of the Tatmadaw but
also as a new national capital (reportedly to be named Nay Pyi Daw, or
“place of the king”). The move astounded both Burmese and overseas
observers, who speculated that astrology and other occult arts must
have played a role in the decision because Senior General Than Shwe is
extremely superstitious. It is also likely that the generals’ desire to in-
sulate themselves from potential urban unrest like that of 1988 and to
isolate themselves from the outside world (foreign diplomats were left
in the dark about the decision) was also an important factor. However,
whether “Nay Pyi Daw” will fully replace Rangoon as the country’s ad-
ministrative center remained unclear at the close of 2005.
Burma remains a country in crisis. Although a few prosper from state
capitalism, the majority of the population face untamed inflation and
economic uncertainty; social problems such as widespread malnutri-
tion, drugs, and AIDS remain largely unaddressed; hundreds of thou-
sands of Burmese are refugees in neighboring countries or are internally
displaced; the country’s political future remains unclear; and the demo-
cratic opposition faces harsher-than-ever suppression. Despite its lead-
ers’ commitment to “national unity,” Burma is a deeply divided society,
over which a history of war, colonial occupation, and ethnic antagonism
casts a long, dark shadow.
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The Dictionary

–A–

ADAPTATION OF EXPRESSIONS LAW (1989). In June 1989, the

State Law and Order Restoration Council decreed the Adaptation
of Expressions Law, which changed the official foreign language
name of the country from “the Union of Burma” to “the Union of
Myanma,” or, more commonly in English, “Myanmar,” and also
changed many place names to a new romanized form closer to the
Burmese (Myanmar) language pronunciation than terms originally
used during the British colonial period. The military government jus-
tified the country name change on the grounds that “Burma” (Bama
in Burmese) refers only to the Burman (Bamar) ethnic group, while
“Myanmar” (Myanma) refers to the citizens of the country regardless
of ethnic affiliation (e.g., the difference between “England” and
“Britain”). In fact, this is untrue: both Bama and Myanma refer to the
same thing, the country of the Burmans, though the former is more
commonly found in conversation and the latter in more formal, liter-
ary contexts. Though the words have different nuances, they are used
interchangeably by Burmese people in everyday communication.
“Myanmar” has been adopted as the official country name by the
United Nations and most Asian governments, but the governments
of the United States and some European countries continue to use
“Burma.” Since 1989, preference for one or the other has to some ex-
tent expressed approval or disapproval of the post-1988 military gov-
ernment, which causes difficulties for those wishing to be politically
neutral. To avoid making a political statement, a few writers use the
cumbersome “Burma (Myanmar),” or vice versa.
Many towns and cities located on the coast had colonial-era En-
glish names based on nonstandard pronunciations of Burmese words

49
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50 • ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLONIAL BURMA

by foreigners, which the Adaptation of Expressions Law changed to

something closer to the Burmese original. The old name of Ran-
goon reflected the Arakanese pronunciation of “Yangon,” which is
now its official foreign language name. Other examples include
Pegu (now “Bago”), Moulmein (now “Mawlamyine”), Bassein
(now “Pathein”), and Tavoy (now “Dawei”). Because their translit-
eration into English more closely approximated the Burmese origi-
nal, many towns in Upper Burma, such as Mandalay, Sagaing,
and Meiktila, have the same romanizations under the pre- and post-
1989 systems. However, Ava became “Inwa,” Pagan became
“Bagan,” and Magwe became “Magway.” The Irrawaddy, Sal-
ween, and Sittang Rivers became, respectively, “Ayeyarwady,”
“Thanlwin,” and “Sittoung.” Many of the post-1989 spellings of
places in ethnic minority regions, especially Shan State, have no
meaning in the local language, for example, the new rendering of
Keng Tung, “Kyaing Tong.” The new place names have caused
considerable confusion, and many supporters of the movement for
democracy refuse to use them. The law also changed the official
foreign language name of the Burman and Karen ethnic nationali-
ties, to “Bamar” and “Kayin,” respectively. Arakan and Karenni
have also disappeared from the official list of ethnic names, now re-
placed by “Rakhine” and “Kayah” (though both of these terms were
also used before 1989). See also “Old and New Country and Place
Names” in the frontmatter.

ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLONIAL BURMA.

Before the British colonial period, Burma was an absolute monarchy,
the king’s authority legitimized by the myth of the Maha Thamada
and his possession of superior merit, accumulated over many life-
times (thus he was often referred to as Hpaya laung, or “future Bud-
dha”). Residing at “the center of the universe” in the royal palace, he
was both ceremonial ruler and power-holder. In a pattern established
by the late Toungoo Dynasty, the king was advised by the Hluttaw,
or Council of State, and the Byedaik, or Privy Council. The former
was responsible for the executive and judicial functions of the state
and the provincial administration, while the latter took care of the
management of the royal court and liaison between the monarch and
central government bodies.
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ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLONIAL BURMA • 51

On the regional level, the realm was divided into districts or myo
(a word that also referred to provincial urban centers), encompassing
what later was known as Upper and Lower Burma. Each myo was
under the control of an appointed governor and a myosa (myoza, “dis-
trict eater”), a member of the royal family or nobility whose income,
as the name indicates, came from extracting resources from his or her
jurisdiction rather than from a fixed salary. Local authorities known
as myothugyi, whose posts were usually hereditary, acted as interme-
diaries between the governor and myosa on the one hand and the
common people on the other, playing an important role in mitigating
the most extreme royal demands on the villagers in the form of rice,
silver, forced labor, and military service. In traditional Burmese po-
litical culture, the king and his officials were not—like the emperor
and elite scholar-officials of Confucian China—regarded (ideally) as
benevolent protectors of the people. Instead, the ruler (min) was de-
scribed, along with fire, flood, personal enemies, and thieves, as be-
ing one of the “five dangerous things to be avoided.” Oppressive
kings like Bodawpaya drained the country of manpower and re-
sources on expensive public works projects (including the massive
pagoda at Mingun) and military campaigns against neighboring
states, especially Siam, while weak monarchs like Thibaw allowed
their realm to collapse into lawlessness. Rarely was a king both
strong and moderate in his demands, though King Mindon ap-
proached this ideal. Palace politics was extremely unstable and at
times violent, especially after a king died, and a succession struggle
ensued among his many male progeny, that is, his sons by his nu-
merous royal wives.
The society of the valley and delta of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River, the Burmese heartland, was divided into four
general strata: the min-myo (rulers), the ponna-myo (Brahmins, or rit-
ualists versed in the Hindu Vedas), thuhtay-myo (bankers and rich
merchants), and sinyetha-myo (the “poor people,” or commoners).
Modeled roughly on the caste system of India (the four varna), mem-
bership in these groups was hereditary and could be changed only by
the king’s decree. Another important division in precolonial Burmese
society was between ahmudan, “royal service subjects”—members
of descent groups who supplied the royal house with goods and ser-
vices, including military officers and men, craftspeople, and palace
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52 • ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD

servants—and athi, general subjects who paid taxes to the king. The
ahmudan lived in discrete settlements outside the regular administra-
tion and were considered more prestigious than the athi because of
their close association with the palace. A final social division existed
between free people and slaves (kyun), who usually were dependent
on a certain individual (e.g., debt slaves) or foreign prisoners of war,
but who could belong to any of the four social strata mentioned
above, with the exception of the royal family. By the end of the 18th
century, a large number of foreigners had been forcibly relocated to
Upper Burma, including Arakanese, Siamese, and people from Ma-
nipur, contributing to ethnic heterogeneity.
In precolonial Burma, “ethnic” consciousness in the modern sense
did not exist, though antagonisms between Burmans (Bamars) and
Mons intensified in Lower Burma after the mid-18th century: Bur-
man rulers tended to view their Mon subjects as disloyal and all too
eager to cooperate with archenemy Siam. But there was a strong con-
sciousness of the differences between the cultures and lifestyles of
lowlanders, such as the Burmans, Mons, and Arakanese (Rakhines),
who shared a common Indo-Buddhist civilization, and upland
groups, such as the Karens (Kayins) and Chins, who were animist
and lived in scattered communities without organized states. The tra-
ditional rulers of the Shans (Tai), the sawbwa, had tributary relations
with the Burmese king, and Shan princesses frequently married into
the royal family. However, Burmese control over the Shan States
was minimal and over the Chins, Kachins, and Nagas, it was practi-
cally nonexistent.
Nationhood—the concept of a fixed land area and population hav-
ing a “national” identity—emerged in Burma during the British colo-
nial period. During the dynastic period, the power of the state “radi-
ated” outward from the royal capital, reaching to more distant regions
(the mountainous areas) when the king was strong and contracting to
close around the capital when his power and authority were weak.
Thus, national boundaries were an idea introduced by the Western
colonialists and employed after Burma became part of the commu-
nity of independent nations after 1948.

ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PE-

RIOD. Following the formal annexation of Upper Burma in Janu-
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ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD • 53

ary 1886, Upper and Lower Burma were administered as a Province

of the British Indian Empire. The country was subject to essentially
the same laws and procedures as the Subcontinent, though the peo-
ple, their customs, and their physical environments were quite differ-
ent. The system was highly centralized and bureaucratized in Burma
Proper (Upper and Lower Burma, also known after 1935 as “Minis-
terial Burma”). In 1897, the post of lieutenant governor of the
province was established. Following the dyarchy reforms of 1923,
Burma became a governor’s province. Wielding executive authority
and advised by a legislative council, the governor was answerable to
the Viceroy of India.
The idea of establishing indirect rule in Burma Proper, employing
a relative of King Thibaw as puppet monarch, was discarded early
on because a suitable royal candidate could not be found. The Upper
Burma Village Regulation (1887) and the Burma Village Act (1889)
led to the abolition of the myothugi, district chiefs under the precolo-
nial system who had enjoyed considerable autonomy and popular
support. They were replaced by village headmen who were mere
functionaries of the colonial state. Governmental legitimacy and so-
cial stability suffered.
The civil service bureaucracy was divided into two sections: the
elite Indian Civil Service (ICS), who until the 1920s were entirely
British, and the Provincial Civil Service, who included Burmese and
Anglo-Burmese. By the beginning of the 20th century, specialized
departments of the provincial government dealing with such matters
as health, sanitation, education, veterinary science, agriculture, fish-
eries, etc., proliferated. Their specialized officials, responsible to de-
partmental secretaries, operated independently of the local authorities
and were coordinated by the Secretariat in Rangoon (Yangon). In
April 1937, Burma became a Crown Colony, whose governor was re-
sponsible directly to the British government in London.
Burma Proper contained eight (later seven) divisions: Arakan,
Irrawaddy, Magwe, Mandalay, Meiktila, Pegu, Sagaing, and
Tenasserim. These were subdivided into districts, subdivisions,
townships, and village tracts. Administratively, the district (two or
three per division) was the “pivot” of regional-local administration,
supervised by deputy commissioners who had wide-ranging respon-
sibilities.
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54 • ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA

Although constitutional reforms allowed for a measure of self-

government during the 1920s and 1930s in “Ministerial Burma,” the
governor retained ultimate authority in vital areas such as defense
and finances. He was also directly responsible for what became
known as the Frontier Areas, where ethnic minorities, the so-called
hill tribes, lived. Unlike Burma Proper, the Frontier Areas were al-
lowed considerable autonomy in local administration, and rulers, such
as the Shan sawbwas and Kachin duwas, retained their authority, if
not their power. Several grades of “chiefs” were recognized by the
British and were supervised by British residents. The five small
Karenni states were not formally a part of British India but were in
a “subordinate alliance” with the British government.
Because of the administrative separation of “Burma Proper” and
the Frontier Areas, the country was never governed as a single unit
during the colonial period, which had serious implications for na-
tional unity after independence in 1948. See also ADMINISTRA-
TION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLONIAL BURMA; GOVERNMENT
OF BURMA ACT; SHAN STATES.

ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BURMA SOCIALIST PRO-

GRAMME PARTY ERA (1962–1988). Following the establish-
ment of the Revolutionary Council by Ne Win in March 1962,
state, division, and local administration became the responsibility of
a hierarchy of Security and Administration Committees (SAC),
which on the national level were controlled by a Security and Ad-
ministration Council Central Committee, directly answerable to the
Revolutionary Council. Chairmen of the SACs on all levels were mil-
itary officers.
Following implementation of the Constitution of 1974, the SACs
were replaced by state/division, township, and ward/village tract
People’s Councils, whose members were elected by popular vote
from a list approved by the Burma Socialist Programme Party. In
principle, the People’s Councils had responsibility for administration
on the regional or local level, but in fact they exercised little auton-
omy. Military officers continued to play a dominant role in adminis-
tration, while the influence of professionally trained civil servants,
many of whom were forced to retire after 1962, declined. The aboli-
tion of the Secretariat in 1972 also diminished the influence of civil-
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AGRICULTURE • 55

ian civil servants. In addition, the administrative system was uniform

for the whole country; no attempt was made to accommodate the spe-
cial circumstances of the ethnic minority states. See also PYITHU
HLUTTAW; STATE COUNCIL.

ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, STATE LAW AND ORDER

RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND DEVELOP-
MENT COUNCIL ERA (1988– ). After the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) was established on September 18,
1988, Burma’s administrative system came under the control of a
martial law regime. The Constitution of 1974 was suspended and
People’s Councils and the Burma Socialist Programme Party
were abolished. The situation was similar to the suspension of the
Constitution of 1947 following establishment of the Revolutionary
Council in March 1962. On the national level, the chairman of the
SLORC (known as the State Peace and Development Council
[SPDC] after 1997) served concurrently as prime minister and head
of the government’s functionally specific, cabinet-level agencies (al-
though a military leader different from the chairman of the SPDC,
Senior General Than Shwe, was appointed prime minister in 2003).
On the regional and local levels, state, division, township, and
ward/village tract “Law and Order Restoration Councils (LORCs)”
composed of military officers directed governmental functions. With
the reorganization of the SLORC as the SPDC in November 1997,
the names of these bodies were changed to state/division, township,
and ward/village tract “Peace and Development Councils.” Accord-
ing to some observers, the original three-tiered structure of regional
and local administration has been modified with the insertion of an
additional level, “Township Circle” or district PDCs, between the
state/division and township levels. Military control is pervasive, and
there is some evidence that the authority of the central government
has been weakened by the augmented powers of generals in charge
of the Regional Military Commands. In addition, cease-fire groups
in the ethnic minority areas often enjoy significant autonomy, in-
cluding their own armed forces.

AGRICULTURE. Blessed with a warm climate and an abundance of

land, Burma traditionally has been a country where no one starved.
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56 • AGRICULTURE

Before World War II, it was the world’s leading exporter of rice.
Agriculture remains the most important sector in the Burmese econ-
omy, employing 63 percent of the labor force and producing 57 per-
cent of the Gross Domestic Product (2000 figures). Agricultural
products still predominate among Burma’s exports, despite the in-
creasing importance of energy exports. Most Burmese farmers are
smallholders, their croplands averaging no more than two hectares
(five acres). Three types of cultivated land are found: well-watered
alluvial lowlands, located in and around the deltas of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady), Sittang (Sittoung), and Salween (Thanlwin)
Rivers and in coastal areas of Arakan State, where paddy rice is
grown; the Dry Zone of central Burma along the upper reaches of the
Irrawaddy, where water is insufficient for wet-rice cultivation (out-
side of irrigated areas, such as Kyaukse) and crops, such as oil seeds
(sunflower and sesame), beans and pulses, sugar palms, maize,
ground nuts (peanuts), and cotton are grown; and upland areas, espe-
cially near the borders with Thailand, China, and India, where ethnic
minorities practice shifting cultivation (taung-ya or hill-clearing,
though the Shans are cultivators of paddy rice). In upland areas, hill-
side vegetation is cleared, usually by burning, to prepare relatively
poor soils for the cultivation of dry rice, buckwheat, or maize in a cy-
cle of subsistence farming that is repeated every few years. In Shan
and Kachin States, the most important agricultural export has been
raw and processed opium, though cultivation and export of opiates
have declined in recent years because of drug-eradication policies.
Tropical and subtropical fruits are grown throughout the country. The
pungent-smelling durian is perhaps the most widely esteemed,
though strawberries grown around Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin) are
also popular.
Burma’s agricultural potential is huge because much arable land re-
mains undeveloped or underutilized. The introduction of high-yield va-
rieties of rice and other crops in the mid-1970s increased production,
but the increases were not sustained during the 1980s because of the es-
sentially coercive nature of the Whole Township Extension Program
and insufficient inputs, such as fertilizers, pesticides, and farm mecha-
nization (water buffalo or cattle are still widely used for plowing).
Coercive state procurement of rice and other crops at artificially low
prices has not given farmers incentives to be productive. Moreover,
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AID, FOREIGN • 57

only about 13 percent of total arable land is irrigated, though the State
Peace and Development Council has carried out a crash program in
dam construction. Agriculture in nonirrigated areas is dependent upon
the seasonal monsoon, making it hostage to periodic flooding and
drought. To increase agricultural exports and earn hard currency, the
military regime has promoted expansion of arable land, double crop-
ping, and the development of large-scale “agribusinesses.”
In the early 21st century, Burma faces an increasingly serious food
security problem because of deforestation (causing floods and soil
erosion), degradation of soils (partly because of double cropping and
lack of fertilizers), and a chronically inefficient distribution system
left over from the Burma Socialist Programme Party era. In con-
trast to the abundant past, malnutrition in both urban and rural areas
is now widespread, especially among children. See also ECONOMY
AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME
PARTY ERA; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE
LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE
AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA; HEALTH.

AID, FOREIGN (OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE).

After Burma became independent in 1948, it accepted aid from both
Western and socialist nations, reflecting its policy of nonaligned neu-
trality. This included P.L. 480 grants from the United States; Japan-
ese war reparations (which were not strictly aid, but constituted the
largest early source of development assistance, a total of US$250
million between 1955 and 1965 and an additional US$140 million in
“quasi-reparations” that were paid out until the early 1970s); assis-
tance from the People’s Republic of China and India; and loans and
grants from Russia (the Soviet Union) and its Eastern European al-
lies, including such projects as construction of Rangoon (Yangon)
Institute of Technology and the Inya Lake Hotel. Aid flows were af-
fected by political developments: In 1953, the government of U Nu
terminated an aid agreement with the United States because of the
Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Kuomintang (Guo-
mindang) forces in Shan State; in 1967, Beijing halted aid follow-
ing Anti-Chinese Riots.
After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in 1962, aid
was drastically reduced, with the important exception of Japanese
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58 • AID, FOREIGN

war reparations and United Nations programs. However, the failure

of socialist self-reliance to promote economic development led to a
change in the regime’s attitude toward foreign aid in the 1970s, at a
time when it was promoting limited economic reform. In 1976, a
donors’ consortium, the Burma Aid Group, was established, con-
sisting of Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, West
Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, and others. Al-
locations from major donor countries increased greatly in the late
1970s, with Japan and West Germany the largest and second-largest
bilateral (nation-to-nation) donors, respectively. Their assistance was
mostly in the form of concessional loans denominated in yen and
deutschmarks. Washington provided support for the Ne Win regime’s
drug-eradication program, selling Burma helicopters to be used to in-
terdict cross-border drug trafficking. Total bilateral and multilateral
aid allocations grew from US$22.9 million in 1970 to US$450.6 in
1988. But foreign debt piled up, reaching US$4.5–5 billion in the late
1980s; the government, unable to meet debt service obligations,
sought and received Least Developed Country status from the United
Nations in 1987.
In the wake of 1988’s Democracy Summer, major donors halted
flows of aid to protest human rights violations, and these sanctions
remained in place through the early 21st century, due in part to the re-
fusal of the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace
and Development Council to recognize the results of the General
Election of May 27, 1990. After establishing formal diplomatic ties
with the new military regime in February 1989, however, Japan re-
sumed some aid projects and offered the SLORC debt relief grants.
Western nations have given grants for humanitarian purposes, and
China has emerged as an increasingly important aid donor. But in
contrast to the 1976–1988 period, when the Ne Win regime became
heavily dependent on official development assistance to fund internal
investment, the post-1988 military regime’s principal source of hard
currency has been the sale of natural resources to neighboring coun-
tries and inflows of foreign private investment. See also ECON-
OMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PRO-
GRAMME PARTY ERA; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY,
STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE
PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.
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AIR FORCE • 59

AIDS IN BURMA. Burma has one of the highest instances of acquired

immunity deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Southeast Asia. Unsafe
sexual practices (prophylactics are scarce and expensive, and sex ed-
ucation almost nonexistent) and the widespread use of heroin in-
jected with unsanitary needles have resulted in an explosion of cases,
as many as 600,000 AIDS/HIV-positive persons in 2005. The State
Peace and Development Council has generally been slow in adopt-
ing effective countermeasures. However, several nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) have begun to address the problem.
AIDS is closely tied to poverty. Among the major spreaders of the
AIDS virus are truck drivers who patronize sex workers while on the
road. In the past, prostitutes were rare outside the big cities, but vil-
lage women have entered the trade in increasing numbers because of
the stagnating rural economy, meaning that truck drivers have greater
access to sex workers. Because the SPDC invests very little in public
health, treatment is almost nonexistent. The poor state of AIDS
awareness has hastened its spread far beyond the world of drug ad-
dicts and brothels; for example, razors used to shave the heads of
young monks during the ceremonies associated with shinbyu are
sometimes infected, making them HIV-positive. Critics of sanctions
claim that trade embargoes against Burmese exports (mostly gar-
ments destined for the United States) have put tens of thousands of
factory women out of work, driving them into the sex industry and
worsening the AIDS epidemic. See also HEALTH; HUMAN
RIGHTS IN BURMA; WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY.

AIR FORCE (TATMADAW LEI). One of the three services of the

Tatmadaw, its commander in chief is a (three-star) lieutenant general
and member of the State Peace and Development Council. Al-
though compared to the Army it is small in terms of personnel,
budget allocations, and political influence, the Air Force has experi-
enced a major expansion in terms of personnel (15,000 in 2000, up
from 7,500 in the mid-1980s), aircraft (including modern, though not
state-of-the-art, interceptors and fighter-bombers), and other equip-
ment since the State Law and Order Restoration Council was es-
tablished in 1988. New aircraft have been procured mostly from the
People’s Republic of China, but also from Russia and Yugoslavia.
Historically, the Air Force’s mission has been support of Army
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60 • AIR TRANSPORT, CIVIL

ground operations, especially against ethnic minority and communist

insurgents, but acquisition of modern jet fighters, including Russian-
built Mig-29s, significantly increases its range of operation. Major air
bases are located at Mingaladon, Meiktila, Shante (in Mandalay
Division), Myitkyina, Hmawbi, Toungoo (Taungoo), and Namsang
(in central Shan State).

AIR TRANSPORT, CIVIL. Before World War II, Imperial Airways of

Britain offered service to Sittwe (Sittway, then known as Akyab) in
present-day Arakan (Rakhine) State and Rangoon (Yangon), land-
ing at the aerodrome at Mingaladon, which served then (as now) as
the country’s major international facility; competitor KLM Royal
Dutch Airways also connected Rangoon with Europe, Singapore, and
the Netherlands East Indies metropolis of Batavia (now Jakarta, In-
donesia). For a brief period, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company oper-
ated domestic air service between Rangoon, Mandalay, and other
points in central and southern Burma.
After Burma became independent in 1948, the Union of Burma Air
Transport Board was established, which became Union of Burma
Airways (UBA) the next year. Following the Karen (Kayin) upris-
ing of January 1949, domestic air links between the capital and be-
leaguered upcountry towns became vital for the survival of Prime
Minister U Nu’s government, and UBA chartered a number of over-
seas private airlines to fly troops and supplies. Among these was
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, which, in the words of one chronicler,
was “something of a buccaneering outfit.” After the government re-
gained control of most of the central part of the country in 1950, con-
tracts with foreign charter airlines were ended, and UBA expanded its
service; by 1953, UBA’s DC-3 aircraft were flying between Rangoon
and 35 domestic destinations, including Keng Tung and Myitkyina
in remote Shan and Kachin States.
In the mid-1950s, Mingaladon airport’s newly completed, air-
conditioned terminal building and 2,470-meter (8,100-foot)-long
runway were among the best in Asia; the airport was included on
east-west routes by major international airlines, including British
Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), KLM, and Pan American
Airways. But these airlines dropped their services during the Ne
Win era (1962–1988), reflecting the country’s isolation and eco-
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AKHAS • 61

nomic stagnation. UBA flew domestic and international routes

with Fokker F-27 and F-28 aircraft and chartered a Boeing 727 for
international service in 1969, part of a tourism promotion policy.
By the early 1990s, UBA, renamed Myanma Airways, flew aging
aircraft that were so crash-prone that foreign governments advised
their citizens not to use the airline.
The State Law and Order Restoration Council’s economic lib-
eralization policies and the “Visit Myanmar Year” campaign in
1996–1997 led to the establishment of new airlines that were joint
ventures with foreign companies: Myanmar Airways International,
Air Mandalay, and Yangon Airways. The last two were designed to
carry tourists to such popular domestic destinations as Mandalay,
Inle (Inlay) Lake, and Pagan (Bagan), using French-built 66-seat
ATR-72 turboprops. A number of regional airlines fly into Rangoon,
including Thai International, Malaysia Airlines, Air China, Biman
Bangladesh, and Silk Air (Singapore).
In 2002, Burma had 80 airports, of which only eight had paved run-
ways; only two airports had runways over 3,047 meters (10,055 feet)
long. Thirty-four airports had runways under 914 meters (3,016 feet)
long. Once one of Asia’s most modern facilities, Mingaladon Airport is
now obsolete, and its runway cannot take wide-bodied aircraft, such as
Boeing 747s. In the late 1990s, the Japanese government gave “hu-
manitarian aid” to modernize it, apparently fearing a crash by All Nip-
pon Airways, which briefly offered a Kansai (Osaka)-Rangoon flight.
A second airport serving Rangoon is planned near Pegu (Bago),
though it apparently remains in the planning stage. A new international
airport at Mandalay was completed at a cost of US$3.15 billion in
2000. Its runway, at 4,242 meters (14,000 feet), is said to be the longest
in Southeast Asia and is capable of accommodating wide-bodied air-
craft. See also AIR FORCE (TATMADAW LEI); RAIL TRANS-
PORT; ROAD TRANSPORT; WATER TRANSPORT.

AKHAS. An ethnic nationality who live in Shan State, in the Keng

Tung (Kengtung) region east of the Salween (Thanlwin) River.
Known also as Kaw or Ekaw, they speak a Tibeto-Burman language
and are also found in northern Thailand, Laos, and China’s Yunnan
Province, their place of origin. Living in settlements above 3,500 feet,
they practice slash-and-burn agriculture on the hillsides, including
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62 • ALAUNGPAYA, KING

cultivation of opium poppies. Most Akhas are animist, though some

have been converted to Christianity by missionaries. Their lands were
incorporated into the Northeastern Command of the Communist
Party of Burma (CPB), but after the 1989 CPB mutiny, Akha con-
tingents have served in the National Democratic Alliance Army—
Eastern Shan State, a drug-financed armed group.

ALAUNGPAYA, KING (r. 1752–1760). Founding king of the Kon-

baung Dynasty, he was a local leader at Moksobomyo, north of Ava
(Inwa), which he made into a fortified capital and renamed Shwebo.
In 1752, Binnya Dala, the ruler of the Mon state of Hanthawaddy,
captured Ava, but Alaungpaya (as he styled himself after proclaiming
himself king, meaning “embryo Buddha”) recaptured it the following
year and led an armed expedition down the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River into Lower Burma, capturing Dagon, which
he renamed Rangoon (Yangon), meaning “end of strife,” in 1755,
Syriam (Thanlyin) in 1756, and Pegu in 1757. With Pegu’s fall, Bin-
nya Dala was deposed and the history of independent Mon states
ended. Alaungpaya attacked the small but troublesome state of Ma-
nipur in northeastern India, dealt harshly with Mon uprisings in
Lower Burma, and launched an unsuccessful invasion of Siam (Thai-
land) by way of Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) in 1760. On this expedi-
tion, he died of disease or injury.
An exemplar of warlike Burman values, historians believe that
Alaungpaya’s reign marked the beginning of polarization between
the Burmans and the ethnic minorities, especially the rebellious
Mons. Earlier kings, such as Bayinnaung, were great admirers of
Mon culture. Lower Burma was largely depopulated by Alaung-
paya’s campaigns.

ALCHEMY. The “science” of magically transforming substances, the

precursor of modern chemistry, which probably had its origins in an-
cient Egypt; distinct alchemical traditions emerged among the Greeks
and Romans, Arabs, Indians, and Chinese. In Burma, metallurgy for
magical purposes (aggiya, “work with fire”) sought a “philosopher’s
stone” that would free the possessor from old age and death, circum-
venting the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara) that Buddhism de-
clares is the fate of all living things. Zawgyi (alchemists) claimed that
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ALL BURMA FEDERATION OF STUDENT UNIONS • 63

by extending life they would be able to encounter in person the Fu-

ture Buddha, who will appear 5,000 years after the death of Gotama
Buddha, enabling them to pass directly into nibbana. One of the
most famous legendary alchemists was the “Goat-Bull Monk,” who,
having blinded himself, used the philosopher’s stone he concocted to
replace his sightless eyes with one eye each from a goat and a bull,
bought at a butcher’s shop. His image is found at the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda. Zawgyi traditionally have been popular figures in Burmese
drama, often depicted as pitiful or comic rather than heroic figures.
Though strong in body and endowed with strong desires, they cannot
have congress with women because the odor of meat-eating human
beings is overpowering, and they must content themselves with the
company of nonhuman “fruit maidens,” which grow on extremely
rare trees in the Himalayas. This legend may have been antimagical
propaganda circulated by orthodox Buddhists. It also reflects the an-
cient belief that immortal beings are tragically denied the consolation
of human companionship and love. See also DHAMMAZEDI;
WEIKZA.

ALL BURMA FEDERATION OF STUDENT UNIONS (ABFSU).

Growing out of the tradition of student political activism estab-
lished by the Rangoon University Students Union and All
Burma Students Union of the 1930s, the ABFSU first came to
prominence when its leader, Min Ko Naing, called for a general
strike on August 8, 1988, the Four Eights (8.8.88) Movement. It
was formally established at a student conference on August 28,
1988, with Min Ko Naing as chairman and Moe Thee Zun as gen-
eral secretary, bringing together student unions from a large num-
ber of universities and high schools. At that time, the ABFSU
claimed a membership of 50,000. Following the seizure of power
by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the
leaders of the student movement decided to divide it into three
parts: a legal political party, the Democratic Party for a New So-
ciety (DPNS); an armed movement, which became the All Burma
Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF); and the ABFSU, chaired
by Min Ko Naing, which worked underground. The effectiveness
of the student union movement, however, was hindered by the ar-
rest of many of its leaders and members, including Min Ko Naing
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64 • ALL BURMA STUDENTS’ DEMOCRATIC FRONT

in 1989 (he was released in 2004). SLORC’s tactics included di-

viding the movement against itself; closing down university cam-
puses throughout most of the 1990s; and, perhaps most effectively,
relocating universities in remote areas and keeping them under tight
surveillance. See also STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF.

ALL BURMA STUDENTS’ DEMOCRATIC FRONT (ABSDF).

Following the power seizure by the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council on September 18, 1988, thousands of students and other
oppositionists fled central Burma for the border areas. By 1989, they
totalled as many as 10,000 persons. On November 1, 1988, several
student groups, affiliated with the All Burma Federation of Student
Unions, held the first congress of the ABSDF in territory controlled
by the Karen National Union (KNU) near the border with Thai-
land. The front, which claimed as many as 5,000 “student-soldiers”
in 1990, was a founding member of the Democratic Alliance of
Burma (DAB), whose chairman was KNU leader Bo Mya. Its first
chairman was Htun Aung Gyaw, but at the ABSDF second congress
in 1991 it broke into two factions, led by Dr. Naing Aung and Moe
Thee Zun. These were later reconciled, and the ABSDF chairman in
2005 was Than Khe.
The ABSDF’s survival depended on good relations with the KNU,
which in the early years supplied it with food, shelter, and a limited
number of arms. The front suffered from not only factional divisions
but also the hard living conditions in the jungle, which caused many
to leave its ranks and go to Thailand or other foreign countries. It
also suffered a serious reverse when the Tatmadaw captured the
KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in January 1995 (its headquarters
at Dawn Gwin were located nearby). Although its original purpose
was to carry out armed struggle against the military regime, the AB-
SDF has branched out into health, educational, and community de-
velopment programs. It has attempted to organize grassroots activi-
ties inside Burma and also functions as a provider of information to
the outside world on the Burmese political situation. Perhaps its
greatest historical significance has been its promotion of a united
front between Burman (Bamar) and ethnic minority oppositionists.
With a primarily Burman membership, it has lived, worked, and
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ALL RAMANYA MON ASSOCIATION • 65

fought side by side with minorities, especially the Karens (Kayins).

See also NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT OF THE
UNION OF BURMA; STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF.

ALL BURMA STUDENTS UNION (ABSU). Known by the acronym

Ba Ka Tha in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, the ABSU was es-
tablished at a nationwide students’ conference on May 8, 1936. Its
original leaders included Ko Aung San; it participated in the massive
demonstrations of 1938–1939 organized by the Dobama Asiayone
and was a member of the Freedom Bloc united front headed by Ba
Maw and Aung San before World War II. It played a prominent
though not unchallenged role in student political activism during the
parliamentary period (1948–1962), was suppressed by the Ne Win
regime, and came into prominence again during the nationwide
demonstrations of 1988. See also ALL BURMA FEDERATION OF
STUDENT UNIONS; STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF.

ALL BURMA YOUNG MONKS UNION (ABYMU). Established on

November 27, 1988, the ABYMU became a member of the Demo-
cratic Alliance of Burma (DAB) and supports its program of resist-
ing the post-1988 military regime, though “within the bounds of Bud-
dhist practices”; that is, it does not take part in armed struggle. In its
publicity, it has drawn attention to the State Law and Order
Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Council’s ar-
rest of dissident members of the Sangha and the council’s attempts
to use Buddhism to secure its hold on power.

ALL RAMANYA MON ASSOCIATION (ARMA). Established in

August 1939 in Rangoon (Yangon), near the Shwe Dagon Pagoda,
ARMA was a nonpolitical organization whose goal was the preserva-
tion of Mon language, culture, and identity. Largely inactive during
World War II, after the war the Association published Mon language
textbooks and a journal, The Mon Bulletin. Although it was basically
apolitical, some ARMA members supported the Anti-Fascist Peo-
ple’s Freedom League, while others wanted to make common cause
with other minority groups, especially the Karens (Kayins). See also
NEW MON STATE PARTY.
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66 • AMARAPURA

AMARAPURA. Meaning “city of the Immortals,” Amarapura is lo-

cated 11 kilometers southwest of Mandalay, in Mandalay Division.
King Bodawpaya of the Konbaung Dynasty made it his royal cap-
ital in 1783, reportedly because the bloody purges carried out in as-
sociation with his rise to power left the old capital, Ava (Inwa), in-
fested with wrathful nats; the capital was located at Ava from 1823
to 1837, but was reestablished at Amarapura from 1841 to 1857, be-
fore King Mindon moved it to its final location, Mandalay. Also
known as Taungmyo (“Southern City”), Amarapura has retained lit-
tle of its past glory but is now the center of the Burmese silk weav-
ing industry.

AMPHETAMINES (ATS). Or metamphetamines. Known as yaa baa

(“crazy medicine”) in the Thai language, a flood of amphetamine-
type stimulants (ATS) or “speed” pills have entered Thailand from
Burma’s Shan State since the mid-1990s, to an extent eclipsing the
traditional but declining production and export of opium. Total pro-
duction is estimated at 800 million tablets, most of which are pro-
duced in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army. In con-
trast to opium suppression measures taken by the State Peace and
Development Council, the military regime has done little to deal
with the problem of amphetamines, which is creating major social
and health problems not only in Thailand but in other Asian coun-
tries, including Burma itself. See also DRUG ECONOMY;
HEROIN.

ANADE (AH-NAR-DE). A social value that many Burmese believe is

unique to their culture, though equivalents are found in other Asian
societies. It involves very strong inhibitions against asserting oneself
in human relations, described as shyness, embarrassment, or awk-
wardness. This is coupled with a strong sense of consideration for the
feelings of others and a desire not to cause them to feel psychologi-
cal distress or unease. For example, anade may inhibit a student from
asking questions of a teacher, even if he or she does not understand a
lecture, because this would trouble a social superior; a Burmese per-
son may go to great effort or expense to show a guest some sight of
interest, such as a pagoda, that he or she has seen many times but to
put the guest’s heart at rest about obligations accrued will claim that
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ANANDA PAHTO • 67

this is also the first time he or she has seen it. A person may hesitate
to tell family members that he or she is seriously ill, for fear of caus-
ing them worry and distress.
Anade is not supposed to be typical of relations between close
friends, who can afford to be frank with each other, or in situations
where the agent sees himself or herself as superior to others, for ex-
ample, a colonial-era civil servant interacting with villagers, a Tat-
madaw officer dealing with civilians, or perhaps a Burman (Ba-
mar) among ethnic minorities. In such cases, bullying often occurs,
given the strong sense of hierarchy and inequality that pervades so-
cial relations. Many observers of the contemporary Burmese scene
claim that anade inhibits the development of democracy and a civil
society because it makes it difficult for people to discuss things
frankly or debate issues. Such frankness or directness is regarded as
aggression.
Non-Burmese dealing with Burmese often find it difficult to get at
the truth of a matter because the latter may feel reluctant to divulge
bad or unsettling news that could be distressful to the hearer, even if
in the long run it would be in his or her interest to know about it.
It is probably necessary to distinguish between anade and mere
survival tactics, or passivity in the face of danger. For, example, dur-
ing the Ne Win period (1962–1988), his subordinates were very care-
ful to give him nothing but good news, for example, about the per-
formance of the socialist economy. Because the hot-tempered
dictator’s word was law, he would readily punish subordinates who
displeased him, with no hope for reprieve. See also HPOUN.

ANANDA PAHTO (ANANDA TEMPLE). One of the principal Bud-

dhist monuments ( pahto) of Pagan (Bagan), believed to have been
built in the early 12th century by King Kyanzittha (r. 1084–1112). A
square, terraced building with entrances on each side and narrow,
vaulted interior passages, its highest elevation, a gilded hti, is 51 meters.
At the center of the interior are standing images of the four historical
Buddhas, including Gotama Buddha, before which life-sized statues of
Kyanzittha and Shin Arahan, the king’s Buddhist teacher, kneel. The
Ananda is richly decorated with bas reliefs and terra cotta tiles depict-
ing the Jatakas, or birth-tales of the Buddha. See also ARCHITEC-
TURE, RELIGIOUS; PAGAN DYNASTY; SHWEZIGON PAGODA.
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68 • ANAUKPETLUN, KING

ANAUKPETLUN, KING (r. 1605–1628). Monarch of the Toungoo

Dynasty, who succeeded in reasserting control over Upper and
Lower Burma following the collapse of royal power at the end of the
16th century. In 1613, he captured Syriam (Thanlyin) and executed
the Portuguese soldier of fortune Felipe de Brito, who had carved
out his own kingdom in that part of the country in an alliance with a
Mon prince. Anaukpetlun also waged war aggressively with Thai-
land (Siam), capturing Chiang Mai and turning it into a Burmese
province in 1615.

ANAWRAHTA, KING (r. 1044–1077). Also known as Aniruddha, the

Burman (Bamar) founding king of the Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty and
the first unifier of Upper Burma and Lower Burma. He established
what is sometimes called the “First Burmese (Myanmar) Empire.” Con-
quering the Mon city-state of Thaton in 1057, he brought its ruler,
Manuha (or Makuta) and 30,000 of his subjects back to Pagan (Bagan).
This resulted in a transformation of the culture of the unsophisticated
and warlike Burmans, who were deeply influenced by the older and
more refined art, literature, and manners of the Mons. In effect, the
Mons were intermediaries who brought the Burmans into the main-
stream of Indo-Buddhist civilization. The earliest monuments at Pagan
are of Mon design, and the Burmans adapted the Mon writing system to
their own language. But the most important development of
Anawrahta’s reign was his recognition of Theravada Buddhism as the
state religion, largely through the influence of a Mon monk, Shin Ara-
han. Among the booty brought back from Thaton were copies of the
Pali Tipitaka. Anawrahta curbed, but did not eliminate, Mahayana in-
fluences, and established the pantheon of 37 nats, enshrined at the
Shwezigon Pagoda, who were an important though subordinate feature
of later Burmese religious life. His realm apparently included most of
modern Burma, including parts of Arakan, Tenasserim (Tanintharyi),
and possibly Shan State. Some historians believe he blocked the west-
ward expansion of the Khmer Angkor Empire, ruled by Suryavarman I,
and had close relations with the Sinhalese ruler of Sri Lanka, a coreli-
gionist. See also KYANZITTHA, KING; MANUHA TEMPLE.

ANGLO-BURMESE. Also known as Anglo-Burmans or Eurasians,

the children of mixed European and Burmese parentage played a
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ANGLO-BURMESE • 69

prominent role in colonial society. Colonial Burma was an in-

tensely race-conscious society, and Anglo-Burmese, along with
Anglo-Indians (children of mixed European-Indian parentage) oc-
cupied an ambiguous position. Although they were never fully ac-
cepted in either indigenous or European society, the British con-
sidered them more trustworthy than the indigenous ethnic groups,
especially the Burmans (Bamars). The Anglo-Burmese found em-
ployment in the civil service (working on the railroads, port au-
thority, and schools), the police, and the colonial armed forces, as
well as in private business. Because of this, the Burmese often re-
sented them, especially after nationalist sentiment intensified in
the 1920s and 1930s. Usually the term “Anglo-Burmese” was used
synonymously with “Eurasian” to refer not only to persons of par-
tial British ancestry but also to the children of Burmese and conti-
nental European (especially Portuguese), North American, Aus-
tralian, and possibly also Middle Eastern (Armenian) parents.
Most Anglo-Burmese were Christians and were educated at
schools run by missionaries. They possessed their own culture and
ways of life, reflecting British values, and are best understood not
as a “race” (or “mixed race”) but as a distinct ethnic group.
The history of Anglo-Burmese/Eurasians goes back at least to the
Bayingyi, Portuguese followers of Felipe de Brito who were reset-
tled near Shwebo in Upper Burma in the early 17th century. Before
the Third Anglo-Burmese War and the fall of the Konbaung Dy-
nasty, a special official, the kalawun, was responsible for resident
Europeans, Eurasians, and Indians (kala originally referring in the
Burmese [Myanmar] language to persons from the Indian subcon-
tinent). Colonization brought large numbers of British male soldiers,
officials, and merchants, many of whom had relationships with
Burmese women, although such contacts were officially discouraged.
This policy was in contrast to the Netherlands East Indies (now In-
donesia), where there was a centuries-long tradition of intermarriage
between Europeans and locals (though the Dutch, for status reasons,
also preferred “pure” European spouses). This created a lamentable
double standard. European women in Burma were few, especially up-
country. Brief liaisons with local women, or the keeping of Burmese
mistresses, was tolerated, while lawful matrimony with a Burmese
woman often subjected a European and his children to both social
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70 • ANGLO-BURMESE

and official opprobrium. Gordon Luce, an eminent scholar of early

Burma, had a Burmese wife, and was criticized by the governor him-
self, Reginald Craddock, for being “pro-Burman” (that is, liking the
Burmese better than his own race). Because of this double standard,
European men frequently abandoned their Burmese consorts and
Eurasian children, leaving them destitute and at the mercy of a soci-
ety that despised them. Some of the most vivid descriptions of the
Anglo-Burmese plight are found in George Orwell’s Burmese Days.
However, toward the close of the colonial era, the prejudice against
interracial marriage seems to have diminished.
In the 1930s, the Eurasian population of Burma, including Anglo-
Burmese, Anglo-Indians, and others, was 110,000 (out of a total of
17 million). The 1931 census of Rangoon (Yangon) counted 9,878
Anglo-Indians, an official category that included Anglo-Burmese,
out of a total population of 400,415; this was more than double the
1901 figure, 4,674 out of a total of 248,060. Special seats were allo-
cated for Anglo-Indians/Anglo-Burmese in the legislatures estab-
lished by the dyarchy reforms of 1923 and the Government of
Burma Act of 1935.
When the Japanese invaded Burma in late 1941, many Anglo-
Burmese left the country, often going on foot over the mountains to
India and suffering great hardship. Those who remained frequently
attempted to pass as Burmese. As Burma approached independence
after World War II, the Anglo-Burmese community faced a difficult
choice: whether to throw in their lot with the new nation, necessary
for surviving in a Burmese- or Burman-dominated society, or leave
their homeland of many generations. Independence leader Aung San
stressed that they must “prove their allegiance by actions and not by
words,” reflecting the nationalist belief that they had been “disloyal”
in the past. They continued to play an important role in national life
during the period when U Nu was prime minister (1948–1962), but
the establishment of a military regime by Ne Win in 1962 led to their
exclusion from the civil service and the higher ranks of the Tat-
madaw. They were denied full citizenship rights under the Citizen-
ship Law of 1982 because their ancestors had arrived in Burma after
the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826). Despite such barriers,
a handful of Anglo-Burmese achieved prominence after 1962, in-
cluding an Anglo-Shan, Brigadier Tommy Clift, who served in the
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ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, FIRST • 71

original Revolutionary Council; June Rose Bellamy (Yadana Nat-

mai), the child of an Australian and a Konbaung princess who be-
came Ne Win’s wife; and Brigadier David Abel, who served as min-
ister of economic planning under the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC). However, the SLORC and the State
Peace and Development Council perpetrated crude slanders against
Aung San Suu Kyi, accusing her of being a “race-traitor” because
she had married an Englishman, Dr. Michael Aris.
Many Anglo-Burmese emigrated to the United Kingdom, Aus-
tralia, and other countries, the community in western Australia being
especially prominent. Because of their fluency in English and their
cultural orientation to the West, Anglo-Burmese have found it rela-
tively easy to assimilate to British and Australian society.

ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, FIRST (1824–1826). War between

Burma and British India broke out on two fronts in January 1824:
Cachar in northeastern India and the border between Burmese-ruled
Arakan (Rhakine) and British Bengal. The latter had been the site
of border clashes and insurgent activity by Arakanese rebels since
King Bodawpaya conquered and sacked the kingdom of Arakan in
1784. The Burmese commander, Maha Bandula, adopted an aggres-
sive policy of catching the British in a double pincer movement,
planning to invade Bengal from Arakan while a second force would
enter British Indian territory from the northeastern hills; his goal was
apparently the conquest of Bengal. But Maha Bandula’s strategy was
thwarted by an unexpected British landing at Rangoon (Yangon) on
May 10, 1824. Forced to return home from Arakan, he attempted to
blockade the British in Rangoon, but was killed in battle in April
1825 at Danubyu (now in Irrawaddy [Ayeyarwady] Division). The
British expeditionary force moved north along the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River, capturing Prome (Pyay) and coming within
64 kilometers of the royal capital at Ava (Inwa). His capital endan-
gered, King Bagyidaw (r. 1819–1838) was obliged to sign the Treaty
of Yandabo on February 24, 1826; it provided for cession of the ter-
ritories of Arakan and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) to the British,
recognition of British dominance over the small states of northeast-
ern India (including Cachar, Assam, and Manipur), a million-pound
indemnity, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ava
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72 • ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, SECOND

and Calcutta. When the indemnity was paid in full, British forces quit
Rangoon, in December 1826.
The war was a classic instance of the clash between two expand-
ing empires. Though the Burmese fought with great courage in de-
fense of their homeland, British superiority in technology and organ-
ization prevailed, though at a high price, because 15,000 out of a total
force of 40,000 British Indian troops died, mostly from disease and
lack of adequate supplies. The war marked a shift in Burma’s rela-
tions with Britain from the offensive to the defensive. But with the
exception of King Mindon (r. 1853–1878), Burmese monarchs failed
to find a way of dealing effectively with the people they dismissively
called the Kalapyu (“white Indians”). The Second and Third Anglo-
Burmese Wars were examples of gunboat diplomacy rather than
protracted wars and resulted in Burma’s complete colonization.

ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, SECOND (1852). What began as a series

of legal and commercial disputes between British India and Burma
ended in the annexation of Lower Burma. Following the fining of
two British sea captains for various offenses by the Burmese gover-
nor of Rangoon (Yangon) and the captains’ request that Calcutta en-
force compensation, Lord Dalhousie, the Indian governor-general,
sent a naval force to Rangoon demanding the sum, a little less than
£2,000, and removal of the Rangoon governor. Intent on war and ex-
pansion of British rule, Dalhousie issued a further, stiffer ultimatum
(including an indemnity of the equivalent of £100,000), and sent an
expeditionary force to Rangoon in April 1852. The Burmese response
was incoherent, and the invading force speedily gained control of
most of Lower Burma, which was declared the British Indian
Province of Pegu (Bago) on December 20, 1852. In 1863, this terri-
tory was amalgamated with Arakan and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi),
which had been annexed during the First Anglo-Burmese War.
The war marked a turning point in the country’s colonization. The
Burmese kingdom was deprived of some of its richest provinces,
where the British developed a flourishing export economy based on
rice. Rangoon, later independent Burma’s capital, became the
colony’s economic and administrative center. The moderate King
Mindon (r. 1853–1878) tried to negotiate the return of Lower Burma,
but without success. Unlike the first war, the second one was not con-
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ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, THIRD • 73

cluded with a treaty, and Anglo-Burmese relations were highly un-

stable. See also ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, THIRD.

ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, THIRD (1885). As in the Second Anglo-

Burmese War, the immediate cause of the third war was a relatively
minor dispute, the decision of the Burmese government to impose a
fine on a British firm, the Bombay Burmah Trading Company
(BBTC), for illegal extraction of teak from royal forests near Toun-
goo (Taungoo). In addition, against the background of Anglo-French
rivalry following establishment of the latter’s interests in Indochina,
the attempt of King Thibaw (r. 1878–1885) to cultivate close ties
with Paris to counterbalance the British proved dangerously provoca-
tive (there were rumors that if the BBTC’s forestry lease was termi-
nated, it would be given to a French company). His rule was under-
mined by incompetence and factionalism, and his powerful Queen
Supayalat, backed by a reactionary court faction, demanded a hard
line against the British. The fact that the British envoy to the court at
Mandalay had been recalled (in 1879) made negotiation over the dis-
pute nearly impossible, while the rumors of expanding French influ-
ence grew thicker on the ground in the royal city and in Rangoon
(Yangon).
On October 22, 1885, the Viceroy of India, Lord Dufferin, sent an
ultimatum to Thibaw demanding settlement of the commercial dis-
pute, further trade privileges for the British, reestablishment of diplo-
matic relations, and British control of Burma’s foreign relations, a
measure that, if accepted, would have meant an end to the country’s
independence. On November 9, Thibaw issued an ambiguous reply.
It was interpreted as a refusal, and a British expeditionary force was
ordered to move up the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River from
Lower Burma on November 14. It captured Mandalay two weeks
later, after minimal Burmese resistance. Thibaw and Supayalat were
sent into exile in India, to the distress of their subjects. On January 1,
1886, the annexation of Upper Burma was proclaimed, and subse-
quently all of Burma was made a province of the British Indian Em-
pire. Although the Third Anglo-Burmese War was little more than
“gunboat (or riverboat) diplomacy,” British troops were tied down
for years afterwards, suppressing guerrilla resistance both in what be-
came known as Burma Proper and the Frontier Areas. See also
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74 • ANGLO-CHIN WAR

ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PE-

RIOD; PACIFICATION OF BURMA.

ANGLO-CHIN WAR (1917–1919). A major event in the history of

Burma’s Chins, sparked by the refusal of many young Chin men, es-
pecially those belonging to tribes living around Haka (Hakha), to
obey British orders to make themselves available for combat and
non-combat service in connection with World War I. At the time, as
many as one million men from India and Burma were serving in
France and Middle Eastern combat zones. A major reason for the
Chins’ rebellion was their belief that once separated from their land,
they would not be protected by their local guardian deities (Khua-
hrum). Following the rebels’ unsuccessful attempt to capture Haka,
British forces carried out systematic and sometimes brutal pacifica-
tion of villages in the rebel areas, which in many ways resembled the
“Four Cuts” policy of the Tatmadaw. In 1919, when the rebellion
was suppressed, rebel leaders were tried, imprisoned, and in three
cases, sentenced to death. However, the Anglo-Chin War marked an
important turning point in relations between the Chins and the colo-
nial government: To gain local support, the British recognized the au-
thority of the traditional Ram-uk (chiefs), which had been nullified
by the 1896 Chin Hills Regulations; recruited Chins to serve in the
colonial army; and made schools established by Christian mission-
aries part of the colonial education system. These changes, coupled
with the influence of thousands of young Chins who did serve in Eu-
rope, resulted in a social transformation of East Chinram, including
a rapid increase in converts to Christianity. During World War II,
Chin soldiers played a major role in British campaigns against the
Japanese. See also STEVENSON, H. N. C.

ANTI-CHINESE RIOTS (JUNE 22–29, 1967). Popular resentment

against black market entrepreneurs of Chinese ancestry became strong
in the 1960s as such necessities as rice were increasingly in short sup-
ply because of rigid socialist policies. Moreover, in 1967 officials at
the Chinese embassy in Rangoon (Yangon) began encouraging pro-
Beijing local Chinese to express their support for the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, including the wearing of red armbands and Mao
Zedong badges by Chinese students in state-run Burmese schools. This
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ANTI-FASCIST PEOPLE’S FREEDOM LEAGUE • 75

was seen as an affront to Burma’s national sovereignty, and badge-

wearing was prohibited by the authorities on June 19, 1967. Two
thousand Chinese students held demonstrations in protest and were
attacked by local Burmese in what was probably the worst racial vi-
olence since the 1930s. Mobs wrecked Chinese-owned shops and
houses in downtown Rangoon and killed around 50 people (official
figure; the Chinese government said that several hundred were
killed). The Chinese embassy was attacked on June 29, and one offi-
cial was killed by a Burmese intruder.
The Ne Win regime proclaimed martial law but failed to apologize
for the incidents, causing what was probably the greatest diplomatic
crisis in Burma’s post-independence history. The killer of the Chinese
official was only punished for criminal trespass on embassy property.
Not only did the Beijing government withdraw its ambassador, sus-
pend foreign aid programs, and begin broadcasting propaganda call-
ing for the overthrow of “fascist dictator” Ne Win, but it also estab-
lished a powerful Communist Party of Burma base along the
China–Burma border in Shan State. The CPB’s “Northeastern Com-
mand” soon became the strongest and best-organized insurgency
fighting the central government. There is evidence that the Ne Win
regime encouraged anti-Chinese violence in order to find an outlet
for the people’s growing economic discontent, but if this is true,
China exacted a heavy price. See also CHINA, PEOPLE’S REPUB-
LIC, RELATIONS WITH.

ANTI-FASCIST ORGANIZATION (AFO). Term used by the British

to refer to underground networks of Thakins, young military officers
and members of the Communist Party of Burma who prepared for
an uprising against the Japanese, working closely with Force 136.
Prominent AFO leaders were Aung San, Thakin Than Tun, and
Thakin Soe. Operating between August 1944 and May 1945, the AFO
was the precursor of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
(AFPFL). See also BURMA NATIONAL ARMY; MOUNTBAT-
TEN, LORD LOUIS; THEIN PE MYINT, THAKIN; WORLD WAR
II IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

ANTI-FASCIST PEOPLE’S FREEDOM LEAGUE (AFPFL). Es-

tablished in August 1944 during the Japanese Occupation, by Aung
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76 • ANTI-FASCIST PEOPLE’S FREEDOM LEAGUE

San and Than Tun, and known to the British as the Anti-Fascist Or-
ganization, its founding charter outlined its goals as ridding the
country of the “fascist Japanese” and winning independence. At the
end of the war, it emerged as the most powerful political organization
in Burma, successfully negotiating with the British to achieve inde-
pendence and governing the country during the tumultuous period
from 1948 to 1958. Both its popular appeal and its ultimate weakness
derived from its structure; it was not a single party but a united front
organization consisting of groups with diverse agendas, of which the
Socialist Party and its affiliated Burma Trade Union Congress and
All Burma Peasants’ Organization were the most important. Other
component groups included the Burma Muslim Congress, the Karen
National Congress, the United Hill Peoples’ Congress, the All-Burma
Women’s Freedom League, the Youth League, and the All Burma
Teachers’ organization. The People’s Volunteer Organization
(PVO) was the League’s paramilitary unit, made up of veterans of the
Patriotic Burmese Forces/Burma National Army. The Commu-
nist Party of Burma was expelled from the AFPFL in October 1946.
The League won a decisive victory in the April 1947 elections to the
Constituent Assembly, the interim legislature charged with drafting
the Constitution of 1947, gaining 171 of 182 noncommunal seats
contested. Aung San was president of the AFPFL until his assassina-
tion on July 19, 1947, when U Nu assumed the post and became in-
dependent Burma’s first prime minister.
In the 1951 general election, held over seven months because in-
surgencies made polling in some areas difficult, the AFPFL won 200
out of 239 seats contested. In the April 1956 general election,
Burma’s second, the AFPFL and its allies won 173 seats (the AFPFL
alone won 155), still a solid majority, though a stronger opposition
had emerged in the form of the National Unity Front.
The League’s lack of internal coherence created serious problems,
especially as the Socialist Party under Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein grew
stronger and threatened to break away, leaving the AFPFL a power-
less rump. Through their intolerance and dogmatism, the socialists
made many enemies, especially among the ethnic minorities. The
Auxiliary Union Military Police functioned as their private army. In
June 1958, the League split into two rival factions, the “Clean AF-
PFL” led by U Nu and the “Stable AFPFL” under Ba Swe and Kyaw
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ANYEINT • 77

Nyein. Because the split threatened to make Burma ungovernable, U

Nu requested that General Ne Win, who as commander in chief of
the Tatmadaw had cultivated an image of responsible neutrality, es-
tablish a Caretaker Government. When general elections were held
in February 1960, U Nu’s faction, later renamed the Pyidaungsu
Party, was returned to power, defeating the AFPFL-Stable.

ANTI-INDIAN RIOTS (1930, 1938). When Indian dockworkers in

Rangoon (Yangon) went on strike in 1930, their employers hired
Burmese to replace them; as soon as the strike was settled in May, the
Indians were rehired, the Burmese discharged, and fighting broke out
between the two groups of workers, which soon turned into mob vi-
olence in which hundreds of Indians, including women and children,
were killed. The British authorities were overwhelmed by the scale of
the riots, which raged unchecked for two days. In July 1938, U Saw
and politically active members of the Sangha denounced a book
written by an Indian Muslim that allegedly disparaged the Buddhist
religion, leading to further anti-Indian riots and almost 200 more peo-
ple killed. Both incidents showed the fragility of Burma’s colonial-
era plural society. See also INDIANS IN BURMA.

ANTI-SEPARATION LEAGUE. Also known as the Anti-Separationist

League, an organization established in July 1932 to bring together
all those groups who opposed Burma’s constitutional separation
from India. Dr. Ba Maw, an influential figure in the League, ad-
vocated temporary federation with India as a step before attain-
ment of full independence. See also GOVERNMENT OF BURMA
ACT.

ANYEINT (ANYEINT PWE). A kind of traditional performance com-

bining instrumental music, song, dance, and comedy routines. It has
been compared to vaudeville. Originally confined to the royal court,
the demise of the Konbaung Dynasty in 1885 led to its widespread
adoption as popular entertainment. Anyeint troupes contain about 10
or 12 members, both male and female. During the colonial, U Nu, and
Ne Win periods, it was not uncommon for such troupes to include co-
medians who made members of the political elite into figures of harm-
less fun. However, political satire in any form has been prohibited by
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78 • ARAKAN LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY

the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and De-
velopment Council, as reflected in their arrest of the Moustache
Brothers in 1996. See also PWE.

ARAKAN LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY (ALD). Established by

Dr. Saw Mra Aung and U Oo Tha Tun following the 1988 prodemoc-
racy movement, the ALD won 11 out of 26 constituencies contested
in Arakan (Rakhine) State in the General Election of May 27,
1990. This made it, in terms of seats won, the third most successful
party in the election, behind the National League for Democracy
(392 seats) and the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (23
seats).

ARAKAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (ANC). Established in 1938 to

promote the interests of the Arakanese (Rakhines), it held its first
convention in 1940. After World War II, Aung San persuaded U
Aung Zan Wai and other leaders to dissolve the ANC and join the
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League as individuals rather than as
members of an AFPFL united front group. Meanwhile, U Seinda, a
militant Arakanese leader and member of the Sangha, began resist-
ance against the central government in 1946 with the goal of estab-
lishing an independent Arakan.

ARAKAN (RAKHINE, RAKHAING). A series of independent king-

doms that flourished from around the fourth century CE, when an ur-
ban center was established at Dhanyawadi, until 1784–1785, when
Arakan was conquered by the Burman (Bamar) King Bodawpaya.
Located in a coastal and riverine region largely coterminous with
modern Arakan (Rakhine) State, the Arakanese enjoyed abundant
supplies of water, rich harvests of rice, and close land and sea com-
munications with the Indian subcontinent. After Dhanyawadi’s fall,
new capitals and states were established at Vesali (sixth to tenth cen-
turies CE), and other locations on or near the Le-Mro River.
The original Arakanese were probably from India, but the eighth-
and ninth-century migration of Tibeto-Burman peoples created a
population linguistically and culturally closely related to the Bur-
mans. Arakan was one of the first areas in Southeast Asia to receive
Indian civilization and the Buddhist religion, and its importance to
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ARAKAN (RAKHINE) STATE • 79

Buddhism is reflected in the legend of the Maha Muni Image,

which Bodawpaya, like his predecessor King Arawrahta, longed to
capture. Although Islamic influences were strong, the Arakan king-
doms were Buddhist, and a number of distinctive pagodas and tem-
ples are located there, including the Shitthaung (Sittaung) temple.
These are comparable in historical and artistic importance to those
found at Pagan (Bagan).
Arakan’s golden age was the early centuries of the Mrauk-U
(Mrohaung, Myohaung) period (1433–1784), when the capital of
Mrauk-U was a center of free trade and a formidable naval power in
the Bay of Bengal. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese merce-
naries helped Mrauk-U control the regional slave trade and occupy
the eastern part of Bengal. At the end of the 16th century, an
Arakanese force invaded Lower Burma, capturing the capital city of
Pegu (Bago). For a brief time, Mrauk-U’s authority extended along
the coast from Dhaka (Dacca) in modern Bangladesh to Moulmein
(Mawlamyine) in present-day Mon State. During the late 17th and
18th centuries, however, the country was weakened by repeated civil
wars and the growing power of the Mughal Empire in India and the
Burmans. In October–December 1784, Mrauk-U fell quickly to a
Burman occupying force, which took the Maha Muni Image, the
royal family, and 20,000 Arakanese subjects back to Bodawpaya’s
capital of Amarapura. Arakanese resistance against the Burmans
continued until the British captured it during the First Anglo-
Burmese War of 1824–1826. See also ARAKANESE; MIN BIN,
KING.

ARAKAN (RAKHINE) STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divi-

sions, it has an area of 36,778 square kilometres (14,200 square
miles) and a population estimated at 2.7 million in 2000 (1983 cen-
sus figure: 2,045,559). Ethnically, the majority of the population are
Arakanese (Rakhines), who are Buddhists and share strong cul-
tural and linguistic affinities with the Burmans (Bamars), though
Arakan (Rakhine) was an independent state until subjugated by
King Bodawpaya in 1784. However, there is a large minority of Ro-
hingyas, who are Muslim, as well as Chins and Burmans. The state
capital is Sittwe (Sittway, known during the British colonial period
as Akyab). Recognized as a state by the Constitution of 1974, it
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80 • ARAKAN (RAKHINE) YOMA

contains five districts (Sittwe, Maungdaw, Buthitaung, Kyaukpyu,

and Sandoway [Thandwe]), subdivided into 17 townships.
Arakan State is elongated, extending in a northwest-southeast di-
rection. To the northwest it shares a short international boundary with
Bangladesh, defined by the Naaf River. Chin State lies to the north,
Magwe (Magway) and Pegu (Bago) Divisions to the east, and Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Division to the southeast and south. The
Arakan coast, fronting the Bay of Bengal, is fringed with islands, of
which the largest are Ramree (Yanbye) and Cheduba (Man-aung).
The Arakan Yoma separates the state from central Burma. The
state’s major river, the Kaladan, reaches the sea at Sittwe.
The state is a major grower of rice, and the abundance of paddy
explains the rise of early kingdoms in the region. Fishing and fish-
eries are also economically important. Abundant natural gas re-
sources are found in Burmese territorial waters off the coast, in the
Bay of Bengal. See also MAHA MUNI BUDDHA IMAGE; MIN
BIN, KING; MRAUK-U.

ARAKAN (RAKHINE) YOMA. A mountain range (yoma in the

Burmese [Myanmar] language) running in a north-south direction,
which lies between the valley of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
River and the Arakan (Rakhine) coastal plain. In the north, it joins
the Chin Hills, while the southernmost extension is Cape Negrais in
what is now Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Division. The highest eleva-
tions are 1,500–2,000 meters (4,921–6,562 feet). The mountains ef-
fectively isolate central Burma from the Bay of Bengal littoral,
though there are several passes, of which the An, Gwa, and Taungup
are the most important. After World War II, the Arakan Yoma was
home to several insurgent movements, including the “Red Flag” fac-
tion of the Communist Party of Burma, led by Thakin Soe until his
capture in 1970.

ARAKANESE (RAKHAING, RAKHINES). One of the major ethnic

minorities of Burma, their homeland is Arakan (Rakhine) State,
bordering Bangladesh on the Bay of Bengal. Independent kingdoms
based on the Indian model existed in this region between the fourth
century CE and its occupation by King Bodawpaya in 1784. The
Arakanese, like the Burmans, speak a Tibeto-Burman language, and
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ARCHITECTURE, MODERN • 81

probably migrated into modern Burma from Inner Asia around the
same time, the eighth and ninth centuries CE. Some linguists suggest
that Arakanese is similar to archaic Burmese. Most Arakanese are
Buddhists, though there is a Muslim minority, commonly called Ro-
hingyas, and Muslim influences from the Indian subcontinent have
historically been strong. According to the 1983 census, the last taken,
the Arakanese comprised 4.5 percent of Burma’s population. See also
ARAKAN (RAKHINE); MRAUK-U.

ARCHITECTURE, MODERN. The history of modern architecture in

Burma can be said to have begun after the British occupied Rangoon
(Yangon) in 1852, following the Second Anglo-Burmese War, and
built a new city based on Western and British Indian design. A rec-
tangular, east-west grid of streets that became Rangoon’s central
business district and the location for many government buildings was
laid out around the Sule Pagoda. In contrast with traditional archi-
tecture, the British made extensive use of brick and masonry, al-
though many colonial-era houses were made of teak. The most com-
mon type of European residence in suburban or rural areas was the
bungalow, a British Indian design, with a single storey, veranda, and
low-pitched roof.
Although generally fireproof, the larger colonial buildings built of
brick or stone were not really suited for the tropical climate, provid-
ing poor ventilation. Many of the most prominent—including the
Strand Hotel, Secretariat (now Ministers’ Building), Rangoon Gen-
eral Hospital, and Port Authority building in central Rangoon—
reflected Victorian or Edwardian rather than indigenous design, but
Rangoon’s central railway station and the Municipal Corporation
(City Hall), designed by U Tin in the early 20th century, used
Burmese motifs, especially the traditional pyat-that or tiered roof. In
densely populated downtown areas, such as those of Rangoon and
Moulmein (Mawlamyine), the typical building was a three- or four-
story row house with a shop on the ground floor and dwellings
above, usually with a stucco façade, much like shop houses found in
Singapore or Malaya. In hill stations, such as Maymyo (Pyin Oo
Lwin) and Kalaw, guest houses, “chummeries” (bachelor quarters
for British company employees), and other buildings were faithfully
designed to evoke, for Europeans fleeing the lowland hot season, the
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82 • ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS

atmosphere of “home.” An outstanding example is Maymyo’s mock-

Scottish Candacraig (Thiri Myaing) Hotel.
Functional, “international” design was used in many post-
independence buildings, including the terminal of Mingaladon In-
ternational Airport and newer buildings on the Main Campus of
Rangoon (Yangon) University, such as the university library.
However, the socialist era of Ne Win (1962–1988) saw little new
construction, especially in urban areas, and existing buildings were
poorly maintained. One of the best examples of socialist-era archi-
tecture is the huge building housing the now inoperative Pyithu
Hluttaw, west of Rangoon’s People’s Park.
Following the establishment of the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) in September 1988 and the opening
of the economy to foreign investment, the architecture of urban ar-
eas, especially Rangoon and Mandalay, was transformed. During the
1990s, new hotels, office buildings, and shopping centers sprang up,
very similar in functional, profit-oriented design to those found in
cities like Bangkok or Singapore. A few (e.g., the Kandawgyi Palace
Hotel) made effective use of traditional materials and motifs. Post-
1988 government buildings, such as the new National Museum and
Defense Services Museum, tend to be utilitarian. In suburban areas of
Rangoon and other cities, the design of housing developments for the
wealthy are similar to those found in other parts of Southeast Asia or
even Southern California.
The Yangon City Development Committee maintains a list of
189 historic sites that cannot be demolished, but the profit motive has
resulted in the tearing down of many others, especially in the old
downtown area. In Mandalay, the colonial-era zeigyo (open air mar-
ket) was demolished and replaced by a three-story enclosed structure
of Chinese design. The haw of the sawbwa of Keng Tung, inspired
by traditional Shan and Indian Muslim designs, was the most re-
markable example of modern Shan palace design until the SLORC
demolished it in 1991, replacing it with a tourist hotel. See also AR-
CHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; ARCHITECTURE, TRADITIONAL.

ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS. The most striking feature of the

human landscape in both urban and rural Burma is the abundance of
religious buildings, which reflects the importance of Buddhism in
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ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS • 83

Burmese life. Although some of these structures, such as the monu-

ments at Sri Ksetra (Thayakhittaya) and Pagan (Bagan), are very
old, construction and renovation of religious buildings continue to be
major activities today. Indeed, investment of scarce resources in such
projects has increased since the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) assumed power in 1988.
Generally speaking, religious architecture in Burma includes three
types of structures: pagodas, temples (pahto), and monastery build-
ings (kyaung). The pagoda contains a chamber housing relics associ-
ated with Gotama Buddha and is surmounted by a stupa, or spire, of-
ten with a hti (“umbrella”) at its apex. Most pagodas are solid
structures, but some, such as the Botataung and Maha Vizaya Pago-
das in Rangoon (Yangon), are hollow. The platforms of major pago-
das, such as the Shwe Dagon, are filled with elaborate and impres-
sive shrines, pavilions, and tazaung (devotional halls), funded by
prominent donors. Covered stairways with shop arcades often lead to
the pagoda platform. Many of these adjacent buildings are adorned
with elaborate tiered roofs, known as pyat-that, which vary in num-
ber but are always uneven.
Pahto, of which the most important examples are found at Pagan,
are hollow and built to resemble caves, containing one or more Bud-
dha images. Within their dark interiors, the atmosphere is not unlike
early Romanesque churches. Pagodas and pahto are generally built of
brick or stone, and there are regional variations in design, for exam-
ple, among those found at Pagan, Lower Burma (including Ran-
goon, Pegu [Bago] and Prome [Pyay]), Shan State, and Arakan
(Rakhine) State. Huge statues of the Reclining Buddha represent a
special category of religious site, the most prominent of which are the
Shwethalyaung in Pegu and the Chaukhtatgyi in Rangoon. In
Burmese, pagodas, pahto, and Buddha images are frequently referred
to as paya.
Monasteries, where members of the Sangha live and carry out
their religious devotions, traditionally were made of wood. Among
the best remaining examples of this type are the Shwenandaw
Monastery in Mandalay and the Bagaya Monastery in Ava (Inwa).
During the British colonial period, Western design was often incor-
porated in wooden or masonry monastery buildings and thein (ordi-
nation halls), good examples of which can be found in Rangoon and
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84 • ARCHITECTURE, TRADITIONAL

Sagaing. The Kaba Aye Pagoda, constructed in Rangoon by the gov-

ernment of U Nu in 1952, employs rather modern motifs.
After 1988, the SLORC (after 1997 known as the State Peace and
Development Council) sponsored a large number of religious build-
ing projects, including the Buddha Tooth Relic Pagoda, Theravada
Buddhist International Missionary University, and White Stone Bud-
dha complex in the northern part of Rangoon. It has also carried out
renovation of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, particularly replacement of
the hti in 1999. Smaller pagodas, monasteries, and other religious
buildings have also been constructed by private persons with state en-
couragement. The new structures often incorporate traditional design
with modern construction methods and materials. See also ANANDA
PAHTO; ARCHITECTURE, MODERN; ARCHITECTURE, TRA-
DITIONAL; MAHA MUNI BUDDHA IMAGE; MRAUK-U;
SALAY; SHITTAUNG TEMPLE; SHWEMAWDAW PAGODA;
SHWESANDAW PAGODA; SHWEZIGON PAGODA; SULE
PAGODA.

ARCHITECTURE, TRADITIONAL. Although Burma is best known

for its religious architecture, the country has a long tradition of sec-
ular architecture, including both royal palaces and what is often
known as “vernacular architecture,” that is, architecture of the com-
mon people. Because both royal and common dwelling structures
were built of wood or thatch, they were not especially durable be-
cause of the tropical climate and the frequent outbreak of fires, which
often devastated (and continue to devastate) residential areas. Most
of the older surviving structures, including Buddhist monasteries,
date from the 19th century. Nothing remains of the old royal palace
at Pagan (Bagan). Except for its extensive brick wall and gateways
surmounted by tiered roofs, Mandalay Palace was destroyed during
World War II.
Royal palaces, constructed mostly of teak, were immense com-
plexes built according to a strict design that reflected Indian concepts
of the structure of the universe; at their center was a multitiered roof
tower (pyat-that), representing Mount Meru or the “center of the uni-
verse,” below which the principal royal throne was placed. Both
palace buildings and the houses of commoners were raised above the
ground, supported by pillars or (in the case of humbler dwellings)
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ARMED FORCES, BURMA • 85

stilts, a design found throughout Southeast Asia. A house thus raised

was protected from flood and unwanted intruders.
The simplest sort of village house, also found in the poorer, outlying
districts of large cities like Rangoon (Yangon) and Mandalay, is made
of thatch, woven grass, and bamboo, and is often shielded from the hot
sun by large trees. The ground floor is used for storage, while the living
space is on the floor above. The spare design of well-maintained thatch
houses rivals the traditional Japanese house in its beauty and simplicity.
More substantial dwellings are made of wood, often elaborately carved
and joined together. Sometimes several wooden houses are grouped to-
gether on a single large platform. Before the British colonial period,
strict sumptuary laws governed the design of the houses of commoners
and court officials. They were forbidden in any way to imitate the style
of the royal palace.
Zayat (rest houses), also made of wood with high roofs, are a com-
mon architectural form. Many are found near important Buddhist
sites, such as the Shwe Dagon Pagoda and Mandalay Hill. See also
ARCHITECTURE, MODERN.

ARIS, MICHAEL (1946–1999). Scholar of Tibetan studies and Ox-

ford University professor, he married Aung San Suu Kyi in 1972
and, after she became prominent in the 1988 prodemocracy move-
ment, played an important role in conveying her messages to the out-
side world and editing her collection of writings, Freedom from Fear.
He had few opportunities to meet her after 1988, however, and the
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) turned down his re-
quest for a visa to see her in Rangoon (Yangon) when he was dying
of cancer. According to reliable accounts, even telephone communi-
cation between the two was cut off by the SPDC. He passed away on
March 27, 1999. Daw Suu Kyi’s marriage to Dr. Aris provided the
military junta with a pretext to brand her as a bogadaw (an old term
meaning the Burmese wife of a British colonial official) and an “axe-
handle” of Western neocolonialists, using racist images in the New
Light of Myanmar and other media outlets that were astonishing for
their crudity.

ARMED FORCES, BURMA (MYANMAR). See ARMY; TAT-

MADAW; TATMADAW, HISTORY OF.
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86 • ARMED FORCES, COLONIAL

ARMED FORCES, COLONIAL. The major characteristics of the

armed forces in Burma under British colonial rule were their rela-
tively small size, reflecting dependence in emergencies on the British
Indian Army; preference shown to ethnic minorities, especially
Karens (Kayins), Chins, and Kachins, in recruitment; and their or-
ganization into ethnically defined “class battalions.” Few Burmans
(Bamars) served in the ranks; according to official statistics for
1931, there were only 472 “Burmans” out of a total of 3,837 men, and
this category also included Mons and Shans. Because the principal
role of the colonial forces was to enforce internal security, the British
were reluctant to encourage participation by Burmans because they
were regarded as potentially disloyal, an assumption bolstered by the
student strike of 1920 and the Saya San Rebellion. Official histories
of the Tatmadaw brand the colonial armed forces as “mercenaries,”
while the units that grew out of the predominantly Burman Burma
Independence Army were “patriotic soldiers.”

ARMED FORCES DAY (MARCH 27). A major national holiday,

perhaps Burma’s most important secular observance, commemorat-
ing the uprising of the Burma National Army led by Aung San
against the Japanese on March 27, 1945. Originally the anniversary
was known as Resistance Day, and the name change to Armed Forces
Day has been criticized by some Burmese because the Tatmadaw’s
history began in December 1941, when the Burma Independence
Army was established, rather than March 1945, and because the mil-
itary regime has changed the holiday’s meaning, from a celebration
of the popular uprising against fascism in 1945 to one glorifying the
Tatmadaw’s role in defending national sovereignty. Official celebra-
tions in Rangoon (Yangon) included a parade to Resistance Park and
a speech by the chairman of the State Peace and Development
Council, Senior General Than Shwe. Neither was accessible to the
general public, as had been the case at Resistance Day celebrations in
the past.

ARMENIANS IN BURMA. Armenia is an ancient country located

north of Iran that has the distinction of being the first to adopt Chris-
tianity as its national religion. Adept in trade, Armenian merchants
did business in the Middle East, Central Asia, India, and points east.
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ARMY • 87

There was a small but prosperous Armenian community in Rangoon

(Yangon) following its establishment by King Alaungpaya in 1755,
and they constructed their own church around 1766. Under British
rule, they remained prominent in the expatriate business community,
especially the Sarkies brothers, who opened the Strand, Rangoon’s
premier hotel, in 1901. However, their numbers remained small, ac-
cording to the official Rangoon census: 252 in 1921, and 136 ten
years later. War, independence, and nationalization under the Ne Win
regime further reduced their numbers. See also JEWS IN BURMA.

ARMY (TATMADAW KYI). The largest of the Tatmadaw’s three

services. Its commander in chief is a full general (in 2005, General
Maung Aye, who also serves as vice chairman of the State Peace
and Development Council). Since 1988, when its personnel num-
bered approximately 170,000 and its order of battle included weapon
systems dating back to World War II, the Army has experienced a
dramatic expansion in terms of men and women under arms (an esti-
mated 400,000 by the end of the 1990s) and equipment, mostly im-
ported from the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, and Pak-
istan. In 2000, the Army contained 437 infantry battalions (including
266 light infantry battalions, which serve as a mobile force) and an
enhanced number of armored, artillery, engineer, signal, military in-
telligence, transport, and medical units using modern, though not
state-of-the-art, equipment.
Although the Army is far better funded and equipped than before
1988, harsh command practices (which some observers suggest were
inherited from the Japanese Imperial Army), poor training, inade-
quate logistics (in some areas, Army units must grow their own crops
or confiscate them from local, usually ethnic minority, residents), and
the forceful recruitment of child soldiers has severely damaged
morale. Moreover, officers, who before 1988 cultivated close ties
with their men in combat against ethnic and communist insurgents,
now devote themselves to making money through graft and control
of military-owned enterprises. Nevertheless, the Army has evolved
into one of the most formidable land forces in Southeast Asia, with
enhanced “force projection” not only internally, but also along the
borders with Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. See also TAT-
MADAW, HISTORY OF.
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88 • ARTS AND CRAFTS, TRADITIONAL

ARTS AND CRAFTS, TRADITIONAL. Although sharing affinities

with the arts and crafts of neighboring countries, Burmese textiles,
tapestries, wood carving, pottery, and sculpture have evolved their
own distinct styles. Cotton and silk longyis and other garments are
woven by hand in various parts of the country, such as Arakan
(Rakhine) State, Amarapura, and the Inle Lake region, and have
attractive and sophisticated patterns; the intricate acheik patterns of
Arakan are very popular among those who can afford them. Kalagas
or tapestries, produced chiefly in Mandalay, have intricate appliqué
designs. Burmese wood carving, traditionally used for the decoration
of royal palaces and Buddhist monasteries, has enjoyed something
of a revival because of a construction boom in international hotels in
the 1990s, not only in Rangoon (Yangon) and Mandalay, but also
in tourist sites, such as Pagan (Bagan). The most characteristic form
of Burmese pottery is rather plain, used for practical purposes, such as
the water jars that householders place by the side of the road for the
benefit of passers-by; most of these are produced at Twante, near
Rangoon. The carving of Buddha images from marble is done in
Mandalay; the stone is quarried in nearby Sagyin district. The largest
marble Buddha image, weighing over 500 tons, is located at the
White Stone Buddha complex in Rangoon’s Insein Township. Col-
orful parasols are made in Bassein (Pathein). Of all traditional arts,
the making of lacquerware, especially in the Pagan region, is ar-
guably the most developed, with a tremendous diversity of designs
and shapes.
The post-1988 military regime’s encouragement of tourism has
benefited traditional craftspeople; quality has improved since the
years of socialist isolation (1962–1988), and tourists find lacquer-
ware, kalagas, and silk fabrics especially attractive.

ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN)

AND BURMA. When ASEAN was established in 1967, the original
founding member-states—Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indone-
sia, and the Philippines—had pro-Western governments and close se-
curity ties with the United States and Britain, including American
and British military bases on their soil. Because of Burma’s commit-
ment to nonalignment and Ne Win’s deep suspicion of foreign coun-
tries, the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime kept aloof
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ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN) AND BURMA • 89

from the regional association. After socialist isolationism was aban-

doned in 1988, however, the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) expressed interest in joining, though ASEAN’s
decision to admit it was highly controversial. Because of the
SLORC’s human rights abuses and its refusal to recognize the re-
sults of the General Election of May 27, 1990, the governments of
the United States and some European countries opposed Burma’s
ASEAN membership, even though they themselves were not mem-
bers. Within ASEAN, Malaysia under Prime Minister Mahathir Mo-
hammad was the SLORC’s strongest backer, while the relatively lib-
eral governments of Thailand and the Philippines expressed doubts
about the regime’s readiness to play a constructive role in the associ-
ation. In the end, SLORC’s supporters won the day and the country,
along with Laos, officially became a member on July 23, 1997, at the
ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
For ASEAN, the perceived advantages of Burma’s membership
were largely economic (potential markets and the country’s rich nat-
ural resources), but also included security factors (the need to coun-
terbalance China’s growing influence inside the country) and the de-
sire of ASEAN member states to assert their independence in the face
of not-so-subtle pressure from Washington. Also, some ASEAN lead-
ers hoped that Burma’s regional integration would promote, through
“constructive engagement,” the country’s economic and political lib-
eralization.
One of ASEAN’s fundamental principles is noninterference in the
internal affairs of member states, but Burma’s continuing political and
human rights problems, including the “Black Friday” Incident of
May 30, 2003, have made the country, in the words of one journalist,
ASEAN’s “problem child.” Immediately following the incident,
ASEAN leaders called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from de-
tention, and Prime Minister Mahathir, quite uncharacteristically, even
suggested that Burma might have to be expelled from the group. In the
months that followed, ASEAN did nothing to follow through on its
criticism of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), al-
though there was a movement within the group, supported by Western
countries, to deny the SPDC the regional chairmanship of ASEAN
when its turn comes around in 2006. In fact, the SPDC relinquished
the chairmanship in favor of the Philippines in July 2005.
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90 • ASTROLOGY

ASTROLOGY. The “science of the stars,” originally brought from In-

dia, continues to have a strong grip on the minds of many Burmese.
Traditionally, the exact moment of a person’s birth becomes the ba-
sis for a horoscope (sada in the Burmese [Myanmar] language),
which is drawn up by an astrologer and serves as a lifelong guide to
prudent behavior. Inscribed on a palm leaf, the sada is filled with
complicated symbols and figures and is often destroyed when the
bearer dies. Depending upon which day of the week he or she was
born, a person is believed to be under the influence of the planet cor-
responding to that day (e.g., Mars is the planet for Tuesday). The
Burmese believe in nine planets, eight of which have astrological in-
fluence that can be either favorable or unfavorable, depending on the
relationship with one’s birth-planet and a number of other compli-
cated factors. Pagoda platforms, most famously the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon), have separate shrines at the cardinal
points of the compass for each of the eight planets and birth-days.
Thus, astrology has connections with Buddhism. Those most ad-
dicted to astrology will undertake no major enterprise, such as going
on a journey, concluding a business deal, or getting married, without
getting an astrologer to examine their horoscopes to find an auspi-
cious day. Following astrological advice, people often change their
names to avoid misfortune.
The exact time and date of Burma’s independence from Britain,
the early morning of January 4, 1948, was determined by astrologi-
cal calculations. Ne Win was famous for his belief in astrology as
well as other occult arts, such as yedaya and numerology. The inte-
rior ceiling of the Maha Vizaya Pagoda, built largely through his
sponsorship in the 1980s, contains astrological symbols, and journal-
ists report that his astrologers used a planetarium located near the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda and donated by the Japanese government (for
educational purposes) to chart the movements of the planets. Though
educated Burmese generally disparage it as unscientific, astrology re-
mains important in the lives of ordinary people and many members
of the military elite. This can be explained as part of a pervasive at-
mosphere of insecurity: the lack of a rule of law, which encourages
governmental abuses of power; the State Peace and Development
Council’s fears about popular unrest; worsening economic condi-
tions; lack of social welfare facilities to deal with sickness or loss of
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AUNG GYI, BRIGADIER • 91

income; and the declining quality of education for most Burmese.

See also NAMES, BURMESE; WEEK, BURMESE.

AUNG, BOHMU (1910–2004). Nom de guerre of one of the Thirty

Comrades, originally known as Thakin Saw Hlaing. He served in the
Burma Independence Army during World War II and held promi-
nent positions in the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League and the
governments of Prime Minister U Nu after independence. Jailed by
Ne Win following the March 1962 coup d’état, he later went into ex-
ile and became head of the northwestern command of the Parlia-
mentary Democracy Party, U Nu’s Thailand-based insurgency, re-
turning to Burma in 1980 after Ne Win declared an amnesty. During
1988’s Democracy Summer, he was a member of U Nu’s “parallel
government” and later became the leader of a group of “veteran
politicians” who advocated dialogue between the State Law and Or-
der Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Council
and the National League for Democracy. His death in November
2004 left only two surviving members of the Thirty Comrades.

AUNG GYAW, BO (?–1938). Student at Judson College, Rangoon

(Yangon) University, who died of wounds inflicted by British mili-
tary police during a demonstration in downtown Rangoon (Yangon)
on December 20, 1938. His body was brought to the Rangoon Uni-
versity Students Union (RUSU), where it lay in state for three days,
and then to Kyandaw Cemetery, where on December 27, his funeral,
according to press accounts, drew as many as 300,000 people. A
monument to Bo Aung Gyaw built next to the RUSU building still
stands, although the building itself was demolished in July 1962. His
counterpart as student martyr in the massive demonstrations of 1988
was Maung Phone Maw.

AUNG GYI, BRIGADIER (1919– ). Close associate of Ne Win who

became a prominent opposition figure during 1988. He served in the
Burma Defence Army/Burma National Army during World War
II and, after the war, in the Fourth Burma Rifles commanded by Ne
Win. He was an important figure in the Caretaker Government of
1958–1960 and a member of the Revolutionary Council following
the March 2, 1962 coup d’état. Aung Gyi was forced off the Council
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92 • AUNG GYI, LETTERS OF

on February 8, 1963, however, following disagreements with doctri-

naire socialists Tin Pe and U Ba Nyein over economic policy. He ad-
vocated pragmatic policies with a role for foreign investment, while
his opponents adopted an Eastern European model, with disastrous
consequences during the 1960s and 1970s. Although he was jailed
from 1965 to 1968 and in 1973–1974, he grew wealthy operating a
chain of cake shops.
His four open letters to Ne Win on economic policy, politics, and
human rights violations had a great impact on the emerging popular
protests of 1988, and he was jailed once again from July 29 to August
25 of that year. Joining in the Aung-Suu-Tin coalition with Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi and U Tin U, he became president of the National
League for Democracy (NLD) after the September 18 power seizure
by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) but
left the NLD after making accusations that Daw Suu Kyi was influ-
enced by elements of the Communist Party of Burma. Never com-
pletely trusted by students and other oppositionists, he was quickly
eclipsed as a prodemocracy leader by Aung San’s daughter. In the
General Election of May 27, 1990, his party, the Union Nationals
Democracy Party, won a single seat. See also AUNG GYI, LET-
TERS OF; DEFENCE SERVICES INSTITUTE; DEMOCRACY
SUMMER.

AUNG GYI, LETTERS OF (1987–1988). Four letters written by re-

tired Brigadier Aung Gyi, an original member of the Revolutionary
Council, to Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) Chairman
Ne Win in July 1987 and March, May, and June 1988. They had a
tremendous impact on public opinion because of his outspoken crit-
icism of the BSPP regime. The first two dealt largely with economic
reform, the third discussed his and Ne Win’s role in Burmese history,
and the fourth and most influential, dated June 8, described the bru-
tality of the Riot Police (Lon Htein), including a detailed descrip-
tion of the March 16, 1988 White Bridge Incident. Aung Gyi at-
tempted to persuade Ne Win, to whom he was deeply loyal, to
repudiate hard-liners such as Sein Lwin and their human rights
abuses. The letters, especially the one from June 8, were photo-
copied and circulated widely among the public. See also DEMOC-
RACY SUMMER.
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AUNG SAN, BOGYOKE • 93

AUNG SAN, ASSASSINATION OF. Around 10:30 A.M. on Saturday,

July 19, 1947, four men armed with automatic weapons entered an
upper-floor room of the Secretariat building (now the Ministers’
Building) in downtown Rangoon (Yangon), where Aung San was
holding a meeting of the Executive Council, Burma’s interim gov-
ernment before independence. They killed Aung San, six other mem-
bers of the Council, and two others, a crime that, from the perspec-
tive of Burma’s subsequent history, was a major national tragedy. The
country’s most able political leader lost his life at the age of 32. The
gunmen were followers of U Saw, a political rival, who, according to
some accounts, wanted revenge after having been wounded in an as-
sassination attempt that he believed was carried out on Aung San’s
orders. But at the trial of U Saw and his followers, it was revealed
that he had ordered the killing of the entire Executive Council in the
mistaken hope that, with Aung San and his colleagues out of the way,
the British would appoint him independent Burma’s first prime min-
ister. Thakin Nu was another intended victim, but he was not in the
Secretariat at the time of the attack.
Like the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the as-
sassination of Aung San is surrounded by some controversy. Ele-
ments in the British army came under suspicion when it was dis-
covered that U Saw was deeply involved in an arms-procurement
conspiracy with a Captain David Vivian and other officers. Some
Burmese suggest that Ne Win instigated the plot, using U Saw and
his henchmen. But the evidence is scanty and contradictory. July 19
is commemorated annually as Martyrs’ Day, though its importance
has been deemphasized since the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) came to power in 1988. See also AUNG SAN,
LEGACY OF.

AUNG SAN, BOGYOKE (1915–1947). Modern Burma’s most im-

portant political figure, who played the principal role in winning in-
dependence from Britain after World War II. Burmese people often
refer to him as bogyoke (commander in chief) because he is credited
with establishing Burma’s Tatmadaw (armed forces) during the war.
Born in Natmauk, Magwe (Magway) Division, on February 13, 1915,
he was an excellent student and attended the National School in
Yenangyaung (Yaynangyoung) on a scholarship. There, he began to
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94 • AUNG SAN, BOGYOKE

take an intense interest in politics. In 1932, he entered Rangoon

(Yangon) University and during the 1935–1936 academic year be-
came editor of Oway, the magazine of the Rangoon University Stu-
dents’ Union (RUSU). Refusing to disclose the name of the writer of
an article deemed highly offensive by the university authorities, he
and RUSU President Nu were expelled, an action that sparked the
student strike of February–May 1936. The strike made him a figure
of national political prominence, and he became a founder and secre-
tary of the All Burma Students’ Union (ABSU) at its first confer-
ence in 1937 and a prominent member of the Thakin Kodaw
Hmaing faction of the Dobama Asiayone the following year. As
secretary general of the Freedom Bloc in 1939–1940, he worked
closely with Dr. Ba Maw in a nationalist united front and also served
as secretary general of the newly established Communist Party of
Burma.
Aung San left Burma in August 1940 to secure foreign backing for
the independence struggle. He was contacted by a Japanese agent in
Amoy (Xiamen), China, and brought to Tokyo where, with consider-
able misgivings, he agreed to work with Colonel Suzuki Keiji to es-
tablish a Burmese armed force that would assist in the Japanese de-
feat of the British in Burma and, Aung San hoped, the establishment
of an independent nation. Returning to Burma to recruit the Thirty
Comrades, he became their leader when they received Japanese mil-
itary training on the island of Hainan in 1941 and was senior staff of-
ficer in the Burma Independence Army, established in December
1941 under Colonel Suzuki’s command. Aung San served as com-
mander of the Burma Defence Army in 1942–1943 and minister of
defense when the country became nominally independent in August
1943. From the very beginning, however, he had no illusions about
the Japanese occupation, and together with Thakin Soe, Thakin Than
Tun, and others established the Anti-Fascist Organization (AFO)
in August 1944. On March 27, 1945, a date commemorated as Resis-
tance Day or Armed Forces Day, he ordered the Burma National
Army (BNA) to rise up against the Japanese.
Though some British regarded him as a traitor, Aung San won the
trust of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who regarded cooperation with
his army, renamed the Patriotic Burmese Forces, as essential for Al-
lied war aims. Leaving the military to pursue a political career, he be-
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AUNG SAN, LEGACY OF • 95

came president of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League and

between 1945 and 1947 used his immense popularity to bring the
British to the negotiating table on the issue of independence. The
Aung San–Attlee Agreement was achieved in January 1947 after
Aung San journeyed to London to negotiate with British Prime Min-
ister Clement Attlee. Winning the support of ethnic minority leaders
at the Panglong Conference in February, Aung San cleared the way
for the creation of the Union of Burma’s semifederal constitutional
order. He would have become the new nation’s first prime minister,
but he was assassinated along with members of his cabinet by gun-
men loyal to a political rival, U Saw, on July 19, 1947, a day com-
memorated as Martyrs’ Day. See also AUNG SAN, ASSASSINA-
TION OF; AUNG SAN, LEGACY OF; STUDENTS, HISTORICAL
ROLE OF.

AUNG SAN, LEGACY OF. Aung San’s legacy has been contested
by successive Burmese governments, ethnic minorities, and the
democratic opposition, especially after 1988. Following his rise to
national prominence during the 1936 student strike, he became a
man of action, a military as well as political leader, rather than a man
of ideas. Yet he had a strongly modernist vision of the nation, as re-
flected in his commitment to the separation of religion and state, an
opinion he held as early as his secondary school days. He was also
opposed to the restoration of the monarchy in a postcolonial Burma.
Like his nationalist student comrades, he embraced socialism as the
antidote for colonial economic exploitation, and he was one of the
founding members of the Communist Party of Burma, serving as
its secretary general in 1939–1940. He broke with the communists
in 1946, however, and his successors, U Nu and Ne Win, espoused
non-Marxist forms of socialism. Some scholars argue that Buddhist
and other traditional influences on his thinking have been greatly un-
derestimated, but he is largely remembered as the founder of a mod-
ern army and state.
Ethnic minority leaders remember him fondly as the one Burman
(Bamar) leader who treated them as equals in nation-building, at the
February 1947 Panglong Conference. Unlike his successors, he did not
propose the use of Buddhism or Burman ethnic identity as the basis for
national unity. Especially during the Ne Win period (1962–1988), Aung
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96 • AUNG SAN SUU KYI, DAW

San was revered as the “father” of the Tatmadaw, while Ne Win was
its “stepfather.” Portraits of him, usually in uniform, were prominent in
government offices and on the nation’s paper currency. His short life
was a major theme in the country’s history textbooks. On the 35th an-
niversary of Martyrs’ Day in 1982, the state media described him as the
“fourth unifier” of Burma, following the old kings Anawrahta, Bayin-
naung, and Alaungpaya.
When student activists and citizens carried his portrait in the
streets of Rangoon (Yangon) and other cities during the massive
demonstrations of 1988, he became a symbol of Burma’s democratic
aspirations, especially after his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi,
emerged as the most prominent leader of the post-1988 opposition
movement. In several highly controversial statements, Aung San Suu
Kyi indicated that Ne Win had betrayed Aung San’s vision of the Tat-
madaw as an army serving the people. As the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) consolidated its power in the early
1990s, it consciously downgraded Aung San’s historical significance,
while at the same time exalting the nation-building achievements of
the old kings, especially Bayinnaung, whose royal palace at Pegu
(Bago) was reconstructed. Portraits of Aung San largely disappeared
from the nation’s currency after 1988, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the
most potent living symbol of Aung San’s legacy, has been kept for
considerable periods under house arrest. See also AUNG SAN, AS-
SASSINATION OF; STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI, DAW (1945– ). Daughter of Aung San, Aung
San Suu Kyi is one of the founders of the National League for De-
mocracy (NLD) and the most prominent leader of the post-1988 de-
mocracy movement. Born in Rangoon (Yangon) on June 19, 1945,
she was the second of three children of Aung San and his wife Daw
Khin Kyi. She was only two when her father was assassinated on
July 19, 1947. After her mother was appointed Burma’s ambassador
to India in 1961, she lived most of her life abroad, until 1988. She ob-
tained a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford
University; worked for the United Nations in New York; and married
a British scholar of Tibet, Michael Aris, in 1972. Subsequently, they
lived in Bhutan, London, Oxford (where Dr. Aris was a fellow at St.
John’s College), and India, and Daw Suu Kyi spent some months in
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AUNG SAN SUU KYI, DAW • 97

1985–1986 at Kyoto University doing research on her father’s

wartime relations with the Japanese. Her life, including raising two
sons, was very private; during this time, she did not become actively
involved in her country’s politics.
The illness of her mother brought her to Rangoon in April 1988,
but she refrained from playing a role in the momentous events of that
year until August 15, when she sent a letter to the government urging
political compromise and deploring the use of arms by the Tat-
madaw against peaceful demonstrators. On August 26, she made her
first major political speech at the western entrance to the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda, an event that drew hundreds of thousands of Ran-
goon citizens. Her eloquence and her resemblance to her father in
both words and appearance made her instantly popular. Rivals, such
as Aung Gyi, dismissed her as a neophyte and influenced by under-
ground communists. But in her role as secretary general of the NLD,
campaigning up and down the country during late 1988 and early
1989, she was largely responsible for winning the popular support re-
flected in the party’s landslide victory in the General Election of
May 27, 1990, despite the fact that she was barred from running for
a seat in the Pyithu Hluttaw and placed under house arrest in July
1989. Frank in her speech and courageous to the point of death (once
facing down armed soldiers during a NLD campaign trip), she had
become a leader in her own right, quite apart from her connection
with the universally respected Aung San.
She remained confined at her residence on University Avenue un-
der house arrest for just under six years, from July 20, 1989 to July
10, 1995, largely cut off from the outside world (except for a radio)
and from her family, and suffered some physical hardship. Much of
the time she spent in reading and meditation. In 1991, she was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her nonviolent
struggle for democracy. The regime’s decision to release her on July
10, 1995, seems to have been based in part on the belief that six years
of house arrest had marginalized her. But the popularity of “public fo-
rums” that she held outside her residence (until they were closed
down in November 1996) and the universal respect she commanded
both at home and abroad showed that she was a more formidable op-
ponent of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
than ever.
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98 • AUNG SAN SUU KYI, IDEAS OF

The period from November 1995, when she withdrew the National
League for Democracy from the National Convention constitution-
drafting process, branding it undemocratic, to a second term of house
arrest beginning in September 2000, was a time of tense and con-
frontational relations with the SLORC (renamed the State Peace and
Development Council [SPDC] in late 1997). She aroused the gener-
als’ ire by supporting the imposition of economic sanctions by West-
ern countries and the continued freeze on overseas development as-
sistance to the SLORC/SPDC, and urged an international boycott of
“Visit Myanmar Year,” the regime’s campaign in 1996–1997 to
raise revenue through tourism. The regime responded by calling her
an “axe handle” (tool) of foreign, neocolonial powers, a traitor to her
race for marrying an Englishman, and a power-hungry witch, as de-
picted in childishly tasteless cartoons in the state-run New Light of
Myanmar (Myanmar Alin) newspaper in the late 1990s. All this
abuse did little to undermine the esteem in which she was held by her
compatriots and abroad, though some critics argued, not always with
disinterested motives, that she was too confrontational and un-
schooled in Burmese cultural values.
Her second term of house arrest—arising from her insistence on
visiting NLD offices outside Rangoon, which the regime wished to
prevent—lasted from September 2000 until May 6, 2002. In January
2001, the special envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General to
Burma, Razali Ismail, announced that Daw Suu Kyi and the SPDC had
begun secret talks, aimed at confidence building, as the preliminary step
toward reaching a peaceful political accommodation. After her release,
she was given unprecedented freedom to travel around the country and
meet with local NLD members, and she seemed to have toned down her
criticism of the SPDC. At the end of 2002, however, there was no indi-
cation that the military regime was willing to undertake serious politi-
cal dialogue with her. Following the “Black Friday” Incident of May
30, 2003, in which she and her supporters were attacked by pro-junta
mobs in Sagaing Division, Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned and then
placed under a third term of house arrest. See also AUNG SAN SUU
KYI, IDEAS OF; AUNG SAN SUU KYI, SYMBOLISM OF.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI, IDEAS OF. Receiving a Western education at

elite institutions, such as Oxford University, moving among cosmo-
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AUNG SAN SUU KYI, SYMBOLISM OF • 99

politan circles as an adult yet strongly committed to preserving her

Burmese and Buddhist heritage, Aung San Suu Kyi has indicated, in
her essay “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism,”
her adherence to a model of modernization in which a synthesis of
Eastern and Western values on the intellectual and spiritual levels
precedes the more conventional modernization of the economic or
technical variety. This synthesis was practiced by leading figures of
the late 18th- and 19th-century “Hindu Renaissance,” whom she de-
scribes in her essay, contrasting the highly developed nature of Indian
social and political reform movements during the colonial era with
the relative lack of development of their counterparts in Burma. In
this and other essays, compiled in the anthology Freedom from Fear
and Other Writings, she emphasizes the universal validity of both
Buddhist and Western democratic ideas, arguing for their compati-
bility and denying the legitimacy of the kind of cultural relativism
that is often used to legitimize authoritarian regimes. Major influ-
ences on her ideas have included not only her father Aung San,
whose career she researched before 1988, but also Mahatma Gandhi
and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who both saw resistance against op-
pression in spiritual as well as political terms and employed nonvio-
lent methods of opposition.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI, SYMBOLISM OF. Although an able and

committed political leader in her own right, Aung San Suu Kyi has
also become a symbol, embodying the traditions, aspirations, and as-
sumptions of her Burmese and foreign supporters. In Burma, where
political authority is traditionally defined in terms of charismatic and
sometimes magical personal characteristics, politics after 1988 has
often been described in terms of a battle of wills between Aung San
Suu Kyi and the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC)/State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) leader-
ship. In such a scenario, political ideas and institutions often seem ir-
relevant. During her 1989–1995 term of house arrest, she was some-
times referred to as “the Goddess (Nat-Thami) of University
Avenue,” and supernatural signs occurring after the General Elec-
tion of May 27, 1990, allegedly included the swelling of the left-
hand side of the chests of Buddha images, indicated that a woman
would become Burma’s ruler (since the left-hand side of the body is
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100 • AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREEMENT

traditionally the side of the mother). Above all, in a land where fam-
ily relations are all-important, her tie to her father Aung San gave her
unparalleled authority as an oppositionist. Thus, she was cast by some
Burmese in the role of a minlaung, a pretender to the throne or
monarch-to-be.
In the West, both governments and individuals have lauded her as
a living testament to the universal relevance of human rights and de-
mocracy, at a time when these values are being challenged by more
particularistic “Asian values.” Her emphasis on the spiritual aspects
of democratization and her synthesis of democratic and Buddhist
values have also given her a symbolic appeal overseas similar to that
of Mahatma Gandhi during India’s struggle for independence.

AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREEMENT (JANUARY 27, 1947). On

December 20, 1946, Britain’s Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee,
invited Burma’s Executive Council to send a delegation to London to
discuss the process through which the country would achieve inde-
pendence. Aung San led the six-man delegation, which included
Thakins Mya and Ba Pe of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom
League (AFPFL), Ba Sein, U Saw, and U Tin Tut, a distinguished
civil servant. They arrived in London on January 9, 1947, and after
generally cordial negotiations signed the agreement on the 27th. It
determined that the Executive Council would enjoy the status of an
interim government similar to that of India, that the British govern-
ment would consult it on matters of defense and foreign affairs and
recognize its command of Burmese armed forces, and that an elec-
tion for a constituent assembly would be held in April 1947. On the
delicate issue of the relationship between Burma Proper (Minister-
ial Burma) and the Frontier Areas, the agreement affirmed the prin-
ciple of their unification and provided for the establishment of a
Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry (FACE) to ascertain the
opinions of the ethnic minority peoples on this matter. The success of
the negotiations was due largely to Attlee’s support of the AFPFL’s
demand for unification of the two areas, while his opponents in Par-
liament saw this as a betrayal of the ethnic minorities, especially the
Karens (Kayins), who had stood by Britain in the war and wanted
either continued British rule or their own independent state. U Saw
and Ba Sein refused to sign the agreement, saying that it did not de-
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AVA • 101

termine the date for independence, a tactic meant to undermine Aung

San’s leadership. See also KAREN GOODWILL MISSION;
KAREN NATIONAL UNION; PANGLONG CONFERENCE.

AUNG SHWE, U. A leader of the National League for Democracy

(NLD), who served as the party’s acting chairman after the impris-
onment of U Kyi Maung in September 1990. He joined the Burma
Independence Army in 1942 and after independence rose to the rank
of brigadier, though he was obliged to leave the military in 1962 and
served in a number of ambassadorships, including Australia, Egypt,
and France, before retiring in 1975. After the NLD was established in
September 1988, he served as a member of its executive committee
along with other veteran military officers, U Kyi Maung and U
Lwin. Following Kyi Maung’s arrest, Aung Shwe played the leading
role in ensuring the NLD’s survival until Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
was released from house arrest in July 1995.

AUSTRALIA, RELATIONS WITH. Although Australia suspended

foreign aid after the SLORC seized power in September 1988, Can-
berra’s perception of the importance of maintaining friendly ties with
neighboring Asian countries contributed to relations based largely on
“constructive engagement,” in contrast to the policies of the United
States and some members of the European Union. Beginning in
2000, the Australian government funded seminars on human rights
for Burmese civil servants, although Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was
sceptical about the usefulness of this program. See also BRITAIN,
RELATIONS WITH; NORDIC COUNTRIES AND BURMA.

AVA (INWA). Meaning “mouth of the river” (in-wa), Ava began its his-
tory as a royal capital during the reign of King Thadominbya
(1364–1368) and remained the capital of Burman (Bamar) king-
doms until the early Toungoo Dynasty. King Thalun returned the
capital from Pegu (Bago) to Ava in 1635, where it remained until
1752, when it was laid waste by Mon rebels. It was the Konbaung
Dynasty royal capital from 1765 to 1783, during the reigns of Kings
Hsinbyushin (r. 1763–1776), Singu Min (r. 1776–1781), and Maung
Maung (r. 1781), but King Bodawpaya moved the capital to Ama-
rapura in 1783. Between 1823 and 1837, Ava served as the capital
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102 • AVA (INWA) PERIOD

again, but an earthquake damaged it in 1837, and King Tharawaddy

(r. 1838–1846) moved the capital back to Amarapura. Ava is located
on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River south-
west of Mandalay, where the Irrawaddy is joined by the smaller My-
itnge River, and close to the irrigated rice fields of Kyaukse. Little of
its past glory remains. Timbers from the Ava palace were used in the
19th century to build U Bein’s bridge, the longest teak bridge in the
world (1.2 kilometers), in neighboring Amarapura. Other sites in-
clude the Ava Bridge, built by the British in 1934, which was until the
1990s the only bridge spanning the Irrawaddy River; and the Ok
Kyaung, a wooden monastery built by Me Nu, King Bagyidaw’s
chief queen. During the 19th century, the term “Ava” was often syn-
onymous with Upper Burma. See also AVA (INWA) PERIOD.

AVA (INWA) PERIOD (1364–1555). Following the collapse of the Pa-

gan (Bagan) Dynasty at the beginning of the 14th century, central or
Upper Burma was in a state of great upheaval as Shans (Tai) from
what are now Yunnan Province in China and Burma’s Shan State in-
vaded the valleys of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) and Chindwin
(Chindwinn) Rivers. Between 1298 and 1364, they established royal
capitals at Myinsaing, Pinya, and Sagaing. In 1364, the Burman (Ba-
mar) King Thadominbya (r. 1364–1368) established a new capital at
Ava (Inwa), southwest of modern Mandalay on the east bank of the
Irrawaddy. A canal was dug to make the city a more easily defensible
island, and its proximity to the irrigated rice fields of Kyaukse gave
it a great economic advantage. Thadominbya’s successors empha-
sized their connections with the long-departed greatness of Pagan.
Although kings ruled at Ava for almost two centuries (until 1555,
when the city was conquered by King Bayinnaung), the period is
generally regarded as a tumultuous interregnum between the collapse
of the “First Burman Empire” at Pagan (Bagan) and the establish-
ment of the “Second Burman Empire” by the rulers of the Toungoo
Dynasty. During this period, no ruler succeeded in unifying the en-
tire country. In Lower Burma, the Mon dynasty established by
Wareru enjoyed a golden age in the 15th century, Arakan
(Rakhine) reached its pinnacle under King Min Bin in the 16th cen-
tury, while Toungoo emerged as an independent Burman power cen-
ter. The warlike Shans remained a constant threat to Ava, as did re-
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BA MAW, DR. • 103

peated interventions by the Chinese across the Salween (Thanlwin)

River during the Yuan and early Ming dynasties. In 1527, Ava fell to
Thohanbwa, a Shan sawbwa, who wreaked great devastation and is
remembered by Burmans today as a kind of Attila the Hun. He and
other Shans ruled there until 1555.

–B–

BA KHIN, U (1898–1971). A prominent teacher of vipassana (insight)

meditation, he was not, like the Mahasi Sayadaw, a member of the
Sangha but a layperson. After graduating from St. Paul’s College in
Rangoon (Yangon) in 1914, he worked for the Thuriya (The Sun)
newspaper for a few years and then joined the civil service as a low-
level clerk. Working his way up through the ranks of the Office of the
Auditor General of the British colonial government, he became a spe-
cial supervisor after the Government of Burma Act was imple-
mented in 1937. It was around this time that he became interested in
Buddhism, reading the works of the Ledi Sayadaw and becoming a
member of several Buddhist devotional and discussion groups. He
sought guidance from respected meditation teachers, perfected his
vipassana techniques, and taught them to others, including members
of the wartime Burmese government such as Foreign Minister U Nu.
When Burma became independent in 1948, he was appointed the na-
tion’s first accountant-general, at the same time continuing his spiri-
tual activities. He established the Accountant-General Vipassana As-
sociation in 1952. This became the nucleus of the International
Meditation Centre in Rangoon, which specializes in teaching vipas-
sana to foreign devotees. Though not a monk, his rapid progress in
mastering meditation techniques and passing them on to others made
him one of postwar Burma’s most respected public figures.

BA MAW, DR. (1893–1977). Prewar prime minister and head of state

of “independent” Burma during World War II. Educated at Rangoon
College (later Rangoon [Yangon] University), Cambridge Univer-
sity, Grey’s Inn, and the University of Bordeaux in France, where he
completed a doctorate, he opened a legal practice in Rangoon (Yan-
gon) in 1924 and first came to prominence as a defense lawyer for
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104 • BA MAW, DR.

rebel leader Saya San in 1931. The following year, he began his po-
litical career as a leader of the Anti-Separation League, and in 1936
he founded his own party, the Sinyetha (Proletarian or Poor Man’s)
Party. In 1937, he became the first prime minister under the Gov-
ernment of Burma Act, but his government fell in February 1939.
In October of that year, he became president of the Freedom Bloc (in
Burmese, Htwet Yat Gaing, or “Association of the Way Out”), a na-
tionalist alliance of the Sinyetha Party, the Dobama Asiayone, and
the All Burma Students’ Union. Secretary general of the Bloc was
Thakin Aung San, with whom he had a close if not necessarily
smooth working relationship during the war.
Before he was tried and imprisoned by the British for sedition (Au-
gust 1940–April 1942), Ba Maw met Japanese diplomats and secret
agents in the hope that Tokyo would aid the struggle for indepen-
dence, facilitating Aung San’s departure from Burma and contact
with Colonel Suzuki Keiji. After the Japanese Army occupied
Burma, the Military Administration (Gunseikanbu) designated him
head of the Burmese Executive Administration. When Burma’s “in-
dependence” under Japanese rule was proclaimed on August 1, 1943,
he became head of state (Nain-ngandaw Adipadi). Seeking to impose
“totalitarian” rule under the slogan “One blood, one voice, one
leader,” he established a single state party, the Dobama Sinyetha Asi-
ayone (later known as the Maha Bama Party) in 1942, and mass or-
ganizations of workers (the Chwe Tat or “Sweat Army”), civil ser-
vants, and ordinary citizens. Viewed by many of the Thakins as a
Japanese puppet, he was in fact so jealous of his independence that a
clique in the Japanese army arranged an unsuccessful assassination
attempt against him in February 1944. At the end of the war, he es-
caped to Japan and was imprisoned at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo be-
fore being allowed to return home in 1946. Although he reassumed
leadership of the Maha Bama Party, his wartime association with the
Japanese discredited him in Burmese eyes, and he never again played
a major political role. In 1966, he was imprisoned for a time by the
Ne Win regime.
Ba Maw’s Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution,
1939–1946 is a well-written and authoritative, though not unbiased,
account of this historically important period. See also JAPANESE
OCCUPATION; MINAMI KIKAN; THIRTY COMRADES.
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BA SWE, U • 105

BA NYEIN, U (1914– ). Civilian economist, advisor to Brigadier Tin

Pe, and a theorist behind the “Burmese Road to Socialism,” ap-
pointed to the Revolutionary Council in 1971. The following year,
he became minister of cooperatives. His influence over policy began
to decline by the mid-1970s, however. Amid growing demands for
some kind of reform, he was obliged to resign from the central com-
mittee of the Burma Socialist Programme Party at its Third Con-
gress in February 1977.

BA PE, U (1883–?). A prominent figure in the early 20th-century his-

tory of Burmese nationalism, Ba Pe was a founding member of the
Young Men’s Buddhist Association in 1906 and also established
Thuriya (The Sun), one of the most important Burmese (Myanmar)
language newspapers during the British colonial period, in 1911. Af-
ter the split in the General Council of Burmese Associations in
1922, he became leader of the “Twenty-One Party,” which advocated
cooperation with the colonial authorities in carrying out the dyarchy
reforms. Though he served as legislator and cabinet minister in a
number of governments during the 1930s, his popularity declined as
a new generation of nationalists came on the scene. Yet in the words
of historian U Maung Maung, “[I]t can truly be said that Burmese
politics was fathered by U Ba Pe . . . .”

BA SEIN, THAKIN (1910–1964). President of the Rangoon University

Students Union in 1930–1931 and chairman of the Dobama Asiayone
in 1935–1936, he broke away from the mainstream Dobama in 1938
along with Thakin Tun Oke to form what became known as the Ba Sein-
Tun Oke faction of the party. He served in the wartime government of
Dr. Ba Maw but because of his political intrigues was sent by the Japan-
ese to Java, Indonesia. Returning after the war, he was favored by
British governor Reginald Dorman-Smith and became a member of his
executive council. Accompanying Aung San and other leaders to Lon-
don, he refused to sign the January 27, 1947 Aung San–Attlee Agree-
ment and served a brief prison sentence in 1947–1948 for his alleged
connection with the Aung San’s assassination.

BA SWE, U (1915–1987). A leading politician and one of the founders of

the Socialist Party of Burma at the end of World War II, becoming
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106 • BA THEIN TIN, THAKIN

its president in 1947. From 1947 to 1952, he was secretary general of the
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) and in 1956–1957
served as prime minister of the Union of Burma. Following the split in
the AFPFL in March 1958, he and U Kyaw Nyein became leaders of the
“Stable” faction, in opposition to U Nu’s “Clean” faction.

BA THEIN TIN, THAKIN (1914– ). Member of the Communist

Party of Burma (CPB) from its inception in 1939, he went under-
ground with the mainstream faction, led by Thakin Than Tun, in
March 1948. Described by one observer as “de facto leader of the
CPB” from the mid-1960s, he did not formally become chairman of
the party until the assassination of Thakin Zin in 1975. Following the
mutiny of ethnic minority troops and the CPB’s breakup in April
1989, he fled from the CPB’s former headquarters at Panghsang,
Shan State, into China, where he remains in retirement. See also
CEASE-FIRES.

BA U GYI, SAW (1905–1950). Charismatic Karen (Kayin) leader

who founded the Karen National Union (KNU). Born to a wealthy
family in Bassein (Pathein) in the delta of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River in 1905, he was a Rangoon (Yangon) Univer-
sity graduate and studied and practiced law in Britain and Burma. Af-
ter World War II he advocated a separate Karen State in the British
Commonwealth and led the KNU uprising in January 1949. On Au-
gust 12 of the following year he was killed by government troops led
by Major Sein Lwin. The Tatmadaw displayed his bullet-shattered
body in Moulmein (Mawlamyine) and then dropped it in the sea to
deprive his Karen followers of a martyr’s gravesite, but he remains
one of the best-known leaders of the Karen resistance, which has
continued for almost six decades. See also MYA, BO; WORLD WAR
II, ETHNIC MINORITIES IN.

BANGLADESH, RELATIONS WITH. Bangladesh became indepen-

dent of Pakistan in December 1971. Arakan (Rakhine) and Chin
States form Burma’s border with that country. In 1978 approximately
200,000 (some sources say 300,000) Muslims from Arakan, known
as Rohingyas, fled across the border, escaping abuses at the hands of
the Tatmadaw. Although most of them were successfully repatriated
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BAYINGYI • 107

(partly because the Ne Win regime feared an international Islamic

backlash), a second refugee crisis occurred in 1991–1992, involving
as many as 280,000 persons, and in this case repatriation proceeded
more slowly. However, by the early 21st century, relations between
the two countries, both members of BIMSTEC, were amicable, as
reflected in the March 2003 state visit of the Bangladeshi prime min-
ister to Rangoon (Yangon). See also INDIA, RELATIONS WITH;
MUSLIMS IN BURMA.

BAO YOUXIANG. Though not as notorious as Lo Hsing-han or

Khun Sa, “Kings of the Golden Triangle” during the Ne Win and
early State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) peri-
ods, at the beginning of the 21st century Bao is Burma’s richest and
most powerful “drug warlord,” commanding the 20,000-strong
United Wa State Army (UWSA). His background is obscure: born
in the late 1940s or early 1950s to a local chief in the northern Wa
district, he fought in the ranks of the People’s Army of the Commu-
nist Party of Burma (CPB) until the CPB broke up in 1989; there-
after, he headed the UWSA, signed a cease-fire with the SLORC, and
expanded the group’s trade in opium, heroin, and amphetamines.
He has declared that he will make the areas under UWSA control
“opium free” by 2005, famously promising that “if we have any more
opium here after 2005, you can come and chop my head off.”

BASSEIN (PATHEIN). The capital of Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Di-

vision, located in the delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River.
With an estimated population of 182,496 in 1996, it is one of Burma’s
largest cities. Bassein is an important seaport and a center for the
milling and distribution of rice. It is well known for its fragrant rice
and the manufacture of colorful umbrellas and parasols (hti). The
city’s name may derive from Pathi, meaning “Muslim” in the
Burmese (Myanmar) language, signifying the importance of Arab
and Indian traders in its early history.

BAYINGYI. Derived from feringhi, a term widely used in India and the
Malay world to refer to white Europeans, especially the Portuguese,
this Burmese (Myanmar) language term refers to the followers
of Felipe de Brito, who were captured after the fall of Syriam
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108 • BAYINNAUNG, KING

(Thanlyin) in 1613 and exiled to villages near Shwebo in Upper

Burma, where they formed a separate community who continued to
adhere to the Catholic faith. Some served in Burmese armies as ar-
tillerymen. Reportedly some inhabitants of Bayingyi villages still
have fair hair, though they have long intermarried with local
Burmese.

BAYINNAUNG, KING (r. 1551–1581). One of Burma’s most

renowned kings, the third monarch of the Toungoo (Taungoo) Dy-
nasty, succeeding his brother-in-law Tabinshwehti following the lat-
ter’s assassination. Crushing Mon resistance and capturing Han-
thawaddy (modern Pegu [Bago]) in 1551, he made it his royal
capital, and in the following years campaigned in the north, captur-
ing Ava (Inwa) from the Shans in 1555 and subjugating the Shan
States. This enabled him to assert suzerainty over Chiang Mai (Lan
Na) and brought him into confrontation with the states of Luang Pra-
bang and Vientiane (in modern Laos), with whom he fought incon-
clusively until the end of his reign. Like Tabinshwehti, he made am-
ple use of Portuguese mercenaries and firearms.
His greatest military achievement was the capture of Ayuthaya, the
Siamese capital, in 1564. The Siamese royal family was taken to
Burma as hostages, but a Mon revolt in Lower Burma made it nec-
essary for Bayinnaung to return home. He recaptured Ayuthaya from
rebels in 1569, pillaging it completely, and Siam became Bayin-
naung’s vassal state. By the mid-1580s, however, it had regained its
independence under the “Black Prince,” Pra Naret.
Cruel in war, Bayinnaung was a model Buddhist monarch, build-
ing pagodas, donating a hti to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and secur-
ing what was claimed to be a Buddha tooth relic from Sri Lanka. He
prohibited animal sacrifices by Muslims and devotees of the nats,
which were offensive to Buddhists. His capital at Pegu (Bago) was
one of the richest cities in Southeast Asia. But endless warfare ex-
hausted his subjects, and his successor, Nanda Bayin (r. 1581–1599),
was unable to sustain his father’s imperial expansion.
The State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and
Development Council has made the warrior king one of its principal
national heroes. In the early 1990s, the military regime built a concrete
replica of his Kanbawzathadi Palace at Pegu, and it has provocatively
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BHAMO • 109

put up statues of the monarch at the borders with Thailand. The mili-
tary regime’s use of Bayinnaung asserts the Tatmadaw’s historical role
in carrying on his work of hard-fisted nation-building and also deem-
phasizes the pre-1988 pantheon of modern heroes, especially Aung
San, whose daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, leads the prodemocracy
movement.

BETEL CHEWING. What is commonly called “betel chewing” in-

volves mastication of a nut from the areca palm (Areca cathechu),
which is sliced or chopped up and wrapped artfully with a bit of liq-
uefied lime in a betel leaf, which comes from a vine (Piper betel) re-
lated to pepper. Sometimes other ingredients, such as tobacco or
spices, are added. Mildly stimulating, betel chewing, a custom they
share with many other peoples in Southeast and South Asia, has
been practiced by the peoples of Burma since before the beginning
of recorded history. Chewing the betel quid produces copious, red-
colored juice mixed with saliva, which is expectorated. Teeth stained
red-black by habitual betel chewing were traditionally thought to be
a mark of beauty.
Betel chewing is heavily laden with cultural and religious symbol-
ism. Burmese women customarily offered a betel quid to their lovers;
monks used it to increase their concentration; and Burmese kings and
high officials possessed beautifully crafted implements for preparing,
storing, and offering betel quids, whose design was regulated by
strict sumptuary laws. High-quality betel boxes were often made of
lacquer or silver.
In recent years, the chewing of betel quids has declined in popu-
larity, especially in cities. The sidewalks of Rangoon (Yangon) are
no longer as heavily streaked with blood-red juice as they were a cou-
ple of decades ago. The State Law and Order Restoration Council
sought to discourage betel chewing on grounds of health and appear-
ance. Among those people who can afford it, it has been largely sup-
planted by other, probably less healthy diversions, such as smoking
Western-style cigarettes or drinking imported whiskey.

BHAMO. A town in Kachin State, located on the banks of the Ir-

rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, south of the state capital of Myitky-
ina. Bhamo is the highest navigable point on the Irrawaddy, and in
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110 • BILU

the past was an important trade center linking China and Upper
Burma.

BILU. Also known as a yaksha, in Burmese art and mythology, an ogre

or demon. Such fearsome creatures figure prominently in the Jataka
Tales and are common artistic motifs at Buddhist sites, such as pago-
das and temples, where their images serve symbolically as guardians.
Bilus are supposed to have an appetite for human flesh, and Bilu Gyun
(“Ogre Island”), in Mon State adjacent to Moulmein (Mawlamyine),
may have acquired its name because cannibals inhabited the place in
antiquity. In modern history, perhaps the most famous reference to
these ogres was made by a Shan delegate to the Panglong Confer-
ence, referring to Aung San: “here at Panglong the Burmese bilu un-
masked himself, and the Shans, Kachins and Chins found him not to
be the bilu they were wont to regard him but a human being as them-
selves, who regarded them as equals and colleagues.”

BIMSTEC. The acronym for “Bangladesh-India-Myanmar-Sri

Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation,” a regional group estab-
lished in June 1997; Burma became a full member in December of
that year. The goals of the group include economic, educational, and
technical cooperation, and each member state is given an area of spe-
cial responsibility (Burma’s is the energy sector). In 2004, the group,
including new members Nepal and Bhutan, signed an agreement
paving the way for a free trade agreement over the next 15 years.
Burma’s inclusion in the group reflects the State Peace and Devel-
opment Council’s desire to diversify its economic ties, implying its
concern not to become economically too dependent on the People’s
Republic of China. See also ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST
ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN) AND BURMA.

BINNYA DALA (BANNYA DALA, r. 1747–1757). The last king of

the Mons, who succeeded Smim Htaw Buddhaketi in a 1747 palace
coup. In 1752, his forces captured Ava (Inwa), extinguishing the Bur-
man Toungoo (Taungoo) Dynasty, but Alaungpaya recaptured Ava
the following year, and carried the war back from Upper to Lower
Burma. In May 1757, Binnya Dala’s capital of Hanthawaddy (mod-
ern Pegu [Bago]) fell to Alaungpaya with great bloodshed. This
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“BLACK FRIDAY” INCIDENT • 111

marked the end of a long history of independent Mon states. Follow-

ing repeated uprisings by the Mons in Lower Burma and Burman
fears that they would ally with Siam (Thailand), Alaungpaya’s son
Hsinbyushin executed the captive Binnya Dala in 1774. See also
KONBAUNG DYNASTY.

“BLACK FRIDAY” INCIDENT (MAY 30, 2003). While returning

from a visit to Kachin State, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and members
of her National League for Democracy (NLD) were attacked by a
large gang of men armed with bamboo staves and other crude
weapons near the town of Budalin in Sagaing Division. The as-
sailants were believed to be members of the progovernment Union
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), and the violence
left as many as 70 or 80 persons dead (the official figure was four).
Daw Suu Kyi was taken into “protective custody,” and by fall of 2003
was back under house arrest. U Tin U and other party leaders ac-
companying her were also detained. The State Peace and Develop-
ment Council (SPDC) claimed that the May 30 incident had been
provoked by overzealous members of the NLD, but most observers
believe it was a move by the SPDC to crush the opposition party af-
ter Daw Suu Kyi’s trips to different parts of the country following her
May 2002 release from house arrest showed that she still enjoyed
tremendous grassroots support. In the wake of the incident, the au-
thorities closed down many NLD branch offices and detained more
party members.
In terms of political dynamics within the SPDC junta, “Black Fri-
day” seemed to reflect the ascendancy of Senior General Than Shwe
over “moderates” led by SPDC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt (who was in
fact purged in October 2004). The incident had major international
repercussions. The United States passed new sanctions, Japan tem-
porarily halted new aid, and even the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations broke with precedent to criticize the SPDC’s hard
line. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed even suggested
that ASEAN might have to expel Burma from membership. The pro-
posal of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand that Burma
follow a “road map” toward democratization was met with wide-
spread skepticism. See also STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT
COUNCIL, INTERNAL DYNAMICS.
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112 • BLACK MARKET

BLACK MARKET. Market-driven commercial activity occurring out-

side the state-controlled economy of the Burma Socialist Pro-
gramme Party (BSPP) period (1962–1988), which Ne Win labeled
“economic insurgency” and tried to cripple with demonetization and
other measures. Probably its most important dimension was illegal
trade in rice and other agricultural products, since much higher prices
were offered to farmers on the black market than by the state agri-
cultural marketing board. So much rice flowed onto the black market
that even in years of good harvests it was often scarce in urban gov-
ernment stores; when harvests were poor due to drought or flooding,
urban residents were desperately short of rice and other foodstuffs,
which contributed to social unrest, especially in the mid-1970s and in
1988. Another form of black market activity was the illegal sale of
goods by military officers, who had privileged access to government
warehouses, to hmaung-kho (black market entrepreneurs), which
earned huge profits for both parties. Economic ties between top mil-
itary officers (or their wives, who often had a keen business sense)
and the hmaung-kho were so widespread that when U Tin U and
“MI” Tin Oo were arrested on charges of dealing on the black mar-
ket, observers knew this was just a pretext to eliminate potential chal-
lengers to Ne Win’s power monopoly. The illegal export of agricul-
tural products and import of manufactured products across Burma’s
borders by ethnic minority insurgents was probably larger than offi-
cial external trade, even when the opium trade is not included. Ac-
cording to economist Mya Maung, the black market constituted two-
thirds of all domestic and external trade during the 1962–1988
period.
Because the socialist system was corrupt and inefficient, it was im-
possible for most people to survive on a day-to-day basis without the
black market; an estimated 90 percent made use of it. Since govern-
ment budgets were severely limited, BSPP and state officials de-
pended on contributions from hmaung-kho to perform their official
duties, offering them legal protection in return. Wealthy hmaung-kho
also contributed generously to pagoda building, offerings to mem-
bers of the Sangha, and traditional festivals. By the 1980s, they may
have numbered as many as several hundred thousand. Many ob-
servers believe that Ne Win’s demonetization of September 1987,
which choked off black market activity and imposed widespread
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BO BO AUNG • 113

hardship, was the major factor in the nationwide unrest and antigov-
ernment movements of 1988.
In principle, the black market no longer exists, since the State Law
and Order Restoration Council decreed the end of the socialist sys-
tem in 1988. However, laws relating to business are applied incon-
sistently, private businesses are still barred from some sectors (such
as gemstones and oil and natural gas), and the present military
regime continues to view business people as motivated by an evil
profit motive. Thus crackdowns, especially on currency traders, are
frequent. See also AGRICULTURE; CURRENCY AND EX-
CHANGE RATES; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY,
BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA.

BO. Literally “lieutenant” in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, it

refers more generally to a military officer or commander. Just before
World War II, the Thirty Comrades used the title to refer to them-
selves, along with a nom de guerre (e.g., Bo Let Ya). Bo was also
used to refer to the commanders of local armies, or local political
bosses. Bogyoke, meaning “major general,” refers to the army’s com-
mander in chief but historically has been used to refer to two men,
Bogyoke Aung San, founder of the Tatmadaw, and Bogyoke Ne
Win, his successor. See also TATMADAW, HISTORY OF.

BO BO AUNG. The most prominent weikza, or occult master, who was

said to have acquired supernatural powers through the use of magic
letters (Burmese “runes”). According to popular belief, his boyhood
companion, who became King Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819), feared Bo
Bo Aung’s powers and tried to have him executed. In captivity, the
weikza challenged the king to a test: Drawing the o-shaped Burmese
letter wa on a wall of the palace, he asked him to erase it. The king
failed to do so, and the letter multiplied magically until thousands of
was covered the wall. Bo Bo Aung’s occult prowess allegedly caused
the king to retire and become a recluse. He is also believed to have
rescued Setkya Min, son of King Bagyidaw (r. 1819–1838), from a
royal purge, taking him to a safe place where he could prepare to be-
come a future king and drive the British from Lower Burma.
Dr. Ba Maw used the Bo Bo Aung legend to gain popular support
for his Freedom Bloc between 1939 and 1941, a time when the
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114 • BO MOGYO

movement for independence from colonial rule was gaining strength,

and a song about the occult master was popular. Ba Maw writes in his
autobiography, Breakthrough in Burma, that worshippers at the
Maha Muni Image in Mandalay claimed to have seen Bo Bo
Aung’s wa letter reflected on the gilded body of the Buddha image, a
sign that the weikza would deliver Burma from her travails.

BO MOGYO. The Burmese name (“Commander Thunderbolt”) as-

sumed by Colonel Suzuki Keiji after he became commander of the
Burma Independence Army. It was apparently suggested to him by
Aung San. For ordinary Burmese, it had tremendous resonance be-
cause a prophecy stated that just as a hunter (Alaungpaya, founder
of the last royal dynasty) had been struck down by an “umbrella rod”
(symbolizing the British), so the umbrella rod would be shattered by
a thunderbolt. There were other stories that Suzuki was a descendant
of the Myingun Prince, who fled Burma after the Third Anglo-
Burmese War. Suzuki promoted his “Burmese” persona by habitu-
ally appearing at public functions in indigenous formal dress. See
also JAPANESE OCCUPATION; THIRTY COMRADES.

BODAWPAYA, KING (r. 1781–1819). Sixth monarch of the Kon-

baung Dynasty, he was the third and last of Alaungpaya’s sons to
occupy the throne and was one of Burma’s most prominent kings. He
is also known as Badon Min. During his reign, Burma enjoyed, for the
last time, a period of military expansion. His coming to power re-
sulted in a bloody purge of his rivals, and he quit the nat-infested
capital of Ava (Inwa), building a new one at Amarapura. Crushing
a revolt by the Mons in 1783, he invaded and occupied the Kingdom
of Arakan in 1784, depriving it of its centuries-long independence
and the sacred Maha Muni Image, which was brought back by his
army along with 20,000 prisoners to Amarapura by way of the
Arakan Yoma and the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River. He at-
tempted unsuccessfully to subjugate the newly established Chakri
Dynasty in Siam (Thailand) and allowed the East India Company to
base residents at Rangoon (Yangon). However, he was basically un-
interested in pursuing amicable relations with the British, who were
increasingly bothered by his arrogance as well as his intervention in
northeastern India (Assam).
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BORDER AREA DEVELOPMENT • 115

Bodawpaya’s domestic policies combined practical and religious

themes. He initiated a thorough survey of his realm’s land and popula-
tion for tax purposes (the “Burmese Domesday Book”) and promoted
public works, especially irrigation. He sought to purify the Sangha,
backing orthodoxy, and sponsored the establishment of the conserva-
tive Amarapura Sect in Sri Lanka. If completed, his pagoda at Mingun
would have been the tallest in the world, at 170 meters. He attempted
unsuccessfully to get the Sangha to recognize him as a Future Buddha.
Bodawpaya’s incessant demands for manpower for public works
and military expeditions imposed terrible hardship on the population,
especially in Arakan, which fanned insurgency that was a contribut-
ing cause of the First Anglo-Burmese War. Although a tyrant, he
was the classical Burman ruler, in the words of one observer, “a mas-
terful man who never hesitated to punish.”

BOGYOKE YWA. “Generals’ village” in the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-

guage, referring to neighborhoods, chiefly in Rangoon (Yangon),
where top-ranking Tatmadaw officers, including members of the
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), live with their
families. At present there are six or seven of these in Burma’s capi-
tal, including parts of Bahan Township, south of Inya Lake, and near
Eight Mile Junction in Mayangone Township, north of the lake,
where SPDC Chairman Senior General Than Shwe resided until the
nation’s capital was moved to a site near Pyinmana in 2005. “Gener-
als’ villages” have special privileges: Residences are spacious and
comfortable, residents can buy high-quality foodstuffs from mobile
vans at subsidized prices, electricity is provided 24 hours a day (part
of the “VIP Grid”), and security is tight. These super-elite neigh-
borhoods go back at least to the Ne Win era (1962–1988). As gener-
als grow old or fall from favor, they often sell their homes in the Bo-
gyoke Ywa to rich businesspeople, including drug-dealing
entrepreneurs from the Kokang or Wa areas of Shan State. See also
TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR) SOCIETY.

BORDER AREA DEVELOPMENT. A policy adopted by the State

Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1989 after the
military government negotiated cease-fires with breakaway ethnic
components of the Communist Party of Burma. The cease-fire
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116 • BORDER AREA DEVELOPMENT

groups, of which the largest is the United Wa State Army (UWSA),

requested economic assistance from the government, and a “Central
Committee for the Development of Border Area and National
Races” was established to this end in May 1989. In September 1992,
a cabinet-level agency, the Ministry for Progress of Border Areas
and National Races, was established. In 1994 the SLORC published
a “Border Areas Development Master Plan,” which set targets for a
three-year (1993–1994 to 1995–1996) and two four-year (1996–
1997 to 1999–2000 and 2000–2001 to 2003–2004) plans. Border
Area Development was the responsibility of Lieutenant-General
Khin Nyunt and the Military Intelligence network he commanded.
Within the top ranks of the Tatmadaw, this situation generated some
friction because regular Army commanders resented the “soft” line
Khin Nyunt took toward the cease-fire ethnic armed groups, many
of whom had engaged the Burmese army in pitched battles before
1989. Following the purge of Khin Nyunt in October 2004, the fu-
ture of Border Area Development is unclear.
The Border Areas (largely coterminous with the colonial-era Fron-
tier Areas, but also including parts of Tenasserim [Tanintharyi] Di-
vision and Mon State) have been divided into 19 regions:
Kachin Special Region No. 1 Padaung Region
Kachin Special Region No. 2 Kayah Region
Kokang Region Kayin (Karen) Region
Wa Region Mon Region
Mawpha Region Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) Region
Kachin Northeast Region Rakhine (Arakan) Region
Keng Tung (Kyaingtong) Region Chin Region
Shan Region Kabaw Valley Region, and
Palaung Region Naga Region
Pa-O Region
Apart from economic development, including exploitation of natural
resources and the construction of roads and bridges, a major goal of
border area development has been eradication of opium poppy cul-
tivation, especially in the Wa and Kokang regions of northeastern
Shan State near the border with China. Foreign aid from the United
Nations, Japan, South Korea, and other sources has been used for
these projects, including Japanese support for opium crop substitu-
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BOUNDARIES, INTERNATIONAL • 117

tion in Kokang. Critics of the State Peace and Development Coun-

cil (SPDC) say that Border Area Development is largely “window
dressing,” designed to improve the government’s global image, but
some observers believe the programs are having a major impact in ar-
eas that, before the 1990s, had known nothing but war for decades.
See also STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL, IN-
TERNAL DYNAMICS.

BOUNDARIES, INTERNATIONAL. Before the imposition of

British colonial rule, Burmese kingdoms did not have fixed bound-
aries; rather, they extended their power and influence in a circle
(mandala) radiating outward from the royal capital, its perimeter de-
termined by the fluid dynamics of power politics and war between
competing states as well as the quality and quantity of human and
material resources at the ruler’s disposal. Thus, at certain times dur-
ing the Toungoo and Konbaung Dynasties, the Burmese realm in-
cluded much of modern Siam (Thailand), Laos, and northeastern In-
dia, while after the Second Anglo-Burmese War it encompassed
only Upper Burma and, loosely, certain ethnic minority areas, such
as the Shan States.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British made treaties
with neighboring states that fixed, at least roughly, the international
boundaries of modern Burma. Following the Government of Burma
Act (1935), neighboring jurisdictions in British India were separated
from Burma by an international boundary. After the country became
independent in 1948, the governments of U Nu and Ne Win and the
post-1988 military regime concluded further territorial and boundary
agreements. At present, Burma’s land boundaries total 6,285 kilome-
ters (3,906 miles) in length: 2,227 kilometers (1,384 miles) with the
People’s Republic of China, 2,098 kilometers (1,304 miles) with
Thailand, 1,453 kilometers (903 miles) with India, 235 kilometers
(146 miles) with Laos (the entire boundary constituting the mid-
channel of the Mekong River), and 272 kilometers (169 miles) with
Bangladesh.
Sea boundaries totaling 2,228 kilometers (1,385 miles) front the Bay
of Bengal, the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama), and the Andaman Sea,
with territorial jurisdiction extending 12 miles from shore and an exclu-
sive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles beyond the territorial
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118 • BRANG SENG, MARAN

waters. Such demarcation is important, given the large quantities of nat-

ural gas found within the EEZs, exploited after 1988 with the participa-
tion of foreign oil companies.
Until recently, both Burma’s land and sea boundaries have been
poorly defended: insurgents, especially those belonging to the
Communist Party of Burma, the Kachin Independence
Army/Organization (KIA/KIO), the Karen National Union, and
the Mong Tai Army, controlled much of the China–Burma and
Thai–Burma border area, gaining major financial support from the
black market and opium trade. The Bangladesh–Burma border
was unsettled because of the determination of the Ne Win and State
Law and Order Restoration Council regimes to expel Muslim
Rohingyas from Arakan (Rakhine) State and the operations of
Muslim guerrillas, known as mujahadin. The India–Burma border
was destabilized by Chin and Naga insurgents, who passed freely
between both countries. Burma’s waters were regularly infiltrated
by foreign vessels, especially Thai fishermen poaching the coun-
try’s rich marine resources.
After 1988, cease-fires with ethnic minority armed groups and
Border Area Development programs increased the central govern-
ment’s leverage along the country’s boundaries, though areas along
the China–Burma border under the control of the United Wa State
Army remain closed to the Tatmadaw. Purchases of naval vessels
and patrol boats since 1988 have enabled the government to more ad-
equately defend its sea boundaries. The State Peace and Develop-
ment Council’s policy of achieving friendly and cooperative rela-
tions with all neighboring states has also played a major role in
stabilizing its international boundaries.

BRANG SENG, MARAN (1931–1994). Leader of the Kachin armed

resistance against the central government, considered one of the
ablest ethnic opposition figures before his death in 1994. He gradu-
ated from Rangoon (Yangon) University in 1954 and became head-
master of the Kachin Baptist High School in Myitkyina in 1957. In
1963, he joined the newly founded Kachin Independence Army/
Organization (KIA/KIO) and rose quickly to positions of responsi-
bility, including leadership of KIO delegations to the People’s Re-
public of China in 1967, 1968, and 1979. Becoming commander of
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BRITO, FELIPE DE • 119

the KIA and chairman of the KIO in 1975–1976, he worked hard to

promote cooperation among ethnic nationalist armed groups and the
Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and was chosen vice chairman of
the Democratic Alliance of Burma in November 1988. His death by
stroke in August 1994, after the KIA/KIO had signed a cease-fire with
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), was a se-
rious blow to the Kachin community and the ethnic nationalist move-
ment in general. He was succeeded as KIO chairman by Zau Mai.

BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH. Although Britain was Burma’s colo-

nial ruler and presided over the introduction of Western influences in
many areas of life, including widespread use of the English language,
post-independence ties have not been as close as in the case of many
other former British colonies, because Burma elected to remain out-
side the British Commonwealth of Nations and the country became
isolated after Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in
1962. Britain provided military assistance under the 1947 Bo Let
Ya–Freeman Defence Agreement, but it was abrogated in 1954.
Colonial-era British firms, such as the Bombay Burma Trading Com-
pany, the Irrawaddy Flotilla, and Burma Oil, were nationalized.
Other countries, especially Japan and West Germany, surpassed
Britain in the amount of foreign aid given, especially during the
1970s and 1980s. After the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) seized power in September 1988, aid from
Britain was suspended, except for humanitarian purposes, and suc-
cessive governments in London have condemned the post-1988
regime’s violations of human rights. During and since the Democ-
racy Summer in 1988, the Burmese-language service of the public
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has provided radio listeners
within the country with a much-needed alternative to the official
mass media.

BRITO, FELIPE DE (?–1613). During the 16th and early 17th cen-
turies, Portuguese soldiers of fortune played an important role in
the turbulent history of the times as mercenaries of Burmese rulers,
especially Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung. De Brito, who served
the king of Arakan during his invasion of Lower Burma in 1599,
gained control of the port of Syriam (Thanlyin) and attempted to
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120 • BUDDHA, GOTAMA

establish his own independent realm. He initially enjoyed friendly

relations with the Mons, who offered to recognize him as king, and
defeated attacks by the Arakanese war fleet and the Burmans at
Toungoo (Taungoo). But his arrogant behavior, which included
the plunder of Buddhist pagodas and plans to convert the popula-
tion to Christianity, made him many enemies. After de Brito cap-
tured and pillaged Toungoo, King Anaukpetlun laid siege to Syr-
iam and occupied it in early 1613. De Brito was executed by
impalement, most of his officers were also killed, and other Por-
tuguese prisoners were taken to Upper Burma, where they served
in the king’s army as musketeers, retained their Catholic faith, and
formed their own distinct community, known as Bayingyi (fer-
inghi). See also TOUNGOO DYNASTY.

BUDDHA, GOTAMA (BCE 563–483). Also Gautama Buddha, the

founder of Buddhism. Born into a wealthy and prominent family in
the north Indian state of Sakka (Sakya), Siddhartha Gotama re-
nounced the world and achieved Enlightenment (bodhi, thus his
name, the Enlightened One) through meditation. He devoted the last
40 years of his life to preaching and established the monastic order,
or Sangha. At his death, he passed into nibbana (nirvana), freeing
himself from samsara, or the cycle of rebirth. Theravada Buddhists
believe that Buddha was a man, not a divine being, and upon enter-
ing nibbana no longer exists in the ordinary sense. Thus, he cannot
intercede on behalf of believers or answer their prayers. All that re-
mains are his teachings (dhamma), which the Sangha preserves and
propagates. However, there is also a long-established belief among
Buddhists that veneration of the Buddha’s personal possessions and
bodily relics (for example, Buddha tooth relics) brings the devotee
a deeper comprehension of the dhamma. Such relics have been
housed in pagodas, of which the most famous in Burma is the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon).
Through the ages, there have been many, perhaps numberless,
Buddhas, each preaching the same doctrine. Gotama Buddha was the
25th of 26 to appear in the present “world cycle” (kappa); the last
Buddha of the cycle, Metteya (Maitreya), will appear 5,000 years af-
ter the death of Gotama. There are two kinds of Buddhas: “private
Buddhas,” including arahants, who achieve nibbana on their own but
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BUDDHA TOOTH RELICS • 121

do not teach the dhamma, and “perfect Buddhas,” such as Gotama,

who do teach dhamma. The latter are considered superior. The
Jataka, or “birth-tales,” recount episodes in Gotama Buddha’s for-
mer lives and are a formative influence on Burmese literature,
drama, and art, as well as religion.

BUDDHA TOOTH RELICS. When Gotama Buddha died and passed

into nibbana, parts of his body, especially his teeth and bones, were
regarded as holy relics, a belief similar to the veneration of Christian
saints’ remains in Catholic countries. In the 16th century, the king of
Kandy in Sri Lanka was the proud possessor of one of four Buddha
tooth relics said to be extant. A devout Buddhist, King Bayinnaung
sent special offerings to the Kandy tooth, including brooms made
from his hair and that of his chief queen. When the Portuguese cap-
tured the tooth in 1561, bringing it back to their colony of Goa in
western India, the Burmese king offered them a royal ransom in ex-
change. The Portuguese civil authorities were happy to convey the
tooth to Bayinnaung’s capital of Pegu (Bago), but the archbishop of
Goa intervened and demanded that it be destroyed. As horrified
Burmese envoys looked on, the tooth was ground to dust and cast
into a river (though according to legend, it magically reconstituted it-
self and returned to Kandy, where it remains today). Some years later,
Bayinnaung accepted a tooth relic from the king of Colombo, which
was placed in Pegu’s Mahazedi Pagoda but later moved to the
Kaunghmudaw Pagoda in Sagaing.
Tooth relics were also brought to China and venerated at the Tang
Dynasty (618–906 CE) capital of Chang-an. At the beginning of the
20th century, one was discovered at a Buddhist monastery near Bei-
jing. Though the People’s Republic of China is a communist regime
that disparages religion as “superstition,” it has used this tooth relic
as a means of promoting friendship with Buddhist communities in
neighboring countries. In the 1950s, the relic was sent to Burma as
part of the Sixth Great Buddhist Council sponsored by Prime Min-
ister U Nu; in 1994, it was sent again to Burma, where it stayed for
45 days amid great pomp and ceremony, reflecting close ties between
China and the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Two
replicas of the relic were made, one of which is kept at Mandalay,
the other at the “Tooth Relic Pagoda,” located north of Inya Lake in
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122 • BUDDHISM

Rangoon (Yangon). The pagoda is frequently visited by members of

the State Peace and Development Council, including its chairman,
Senior General Than Shwe. The histories of the Sri Lankan and Chi-
nese tooth relics in relation to Burma show how politics, diplomacy,
and religion have been complexly intertwined.

BUDDHISM. Established by Gotama Buddha, it is the religion of be-

tween 85 to 90 percent of Burma’s people. Burmese Buddhism, like
that of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia, is of the Theravada
stream, although before the establishment of the Pagan (Bagan) Dy-
nasty in the 11th century CE, the practice of Mahayana Buddhism
was also widespread. Burmese legends tell of the Buddha’s visit to
Burma during his lifetime, but the religion probably did not enter the
country until the early centuries CE. Buddhist centers were located at
Dhanyawadi and Vesali in Arakan (Rakhine) around the fourth to
eighth centuries CE, and at Mon states established in Lower Burma
around the same time. Both areas had close trade and cultural ties
with the Indian subcontinent. The Pyus and the Burmans adopted
the religion after their migration from Inner Asia. King Anawrahta
of Pagan, advised by the Mon monk Shin Arahan, made Theravada
Buddhism the official religion of his unified realm and established
patterns of state–Sangha relations that persist in modified form to
this day.
In Burma’s multiethnic society, the overwhelming majority of Bur-
mans, Mons, and Shans, as well as many Karens (Kayins), are ad-
herents of Buddhism. The fact that elites of the Karens and other “hill
tribe” minorities, such as the Kachins and Karennis (Kayahs), are
Christian, and most persons of Indian ancestry are Hindu or Muslim,
has tended to keep these minorities out of the national mainstream,
where the dominant idea is that “to be Burmese is to be Buddhist.”
In Burma, Buddhist thought, life-cycle events, and daily practice
are tremendously complex, including the paying of homage to mem-
bers of the Sangha, Buddha images, and pagodas; giving monks food
or other offerings; the performance of other meritorious deeds, such
as building pagodas, liberating animals, and sponsoring shinbyu cer-
emonies; and undergoing strict meditation regimes. Members of the
Sangha, who in the late 1980s numbered around 300,000, are ex-
pected to observe the 227 rules of the vinaya, while laypeople have a
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BURMA ARMY • 123

less-strict code based on the five or ten precepts (sila). Although the
Buddha himself is not considered a god, Burmese Buddhism coexists
with a pantheon of gods or nats, local and brought from India, who
are often seen as divine protectors of the religion.
The Buddha’s teachings can be summarized as emphasizing im-
permanence, suffering as the basic quality of life, and non-self, that
is, the lack of an immortal soul. The basic principles are summed up
in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path of Righteousness that
Gotama Buddha taught. Escape from samsara and the attainment of
nibbana are considered the supreme goods. Most ordinary Buddhists
hope that by accumulating merit (kutho) through performance of
good deeds, they can achieve a rebirth on a plane higher than their
present one, or at least avoid the torments of hell. Connected with
Buddhism, though not doctrinally consistent with it, are certain mag-
ical practices, such as yedaya, that can be used as protection against
ill fortune.

BURMA AID GROUP. Also known as the Aid Burma Consultative

Group, a consortium of national and multilateral donors of foreign
aid established in 1976 to coordinate official development assistance,
mostly in the form of concessionary loans, to the Ne Win regime. Its
members included Japan (the single largest donor), the World Bank,
the Asian Development Bank, West Germany, France, Britain, Aus-
tralia, the United States, and the United Nations. Largely in re-
sponse to Ne Win’s promise to implement market-oriented economic
reform, the Group oversaw the disbursement of hundreds of millions
of U.S. dollars annually during the late 1970s and early 1980s,
though it seems to have become largely inoperative by 1988, when
most aid funds were cut off for political and human rights reasons.
See also ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SO-
CIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA.

BURMA ARMY. The armed forces established by Lord Louis Mount-

batten, Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, following the
September 1945 Kandy Conference between himself, other British
officials, and leaders of the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF) and the
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL). Until indepen-
dence in January 1948, it was part of British Commonwealth forces,
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124 • BURMA DEFENCE ARMY

and its commander was a British major general, assisted by Bo Let

Ya and Smith Dun, who both held the rank of deputy inspector gen-
eral. It consisted of three battalions of PBF men, Burman veterans of
the Burma National Army who had risen against the Japanese on
March 27, 1945, and seven “class battalions” (units specified by eth-
nicity) comprising Karens (Kayins), Chins, Kachins, and the small
number of Burmans who had served in the prewar colonial armed
forces. Naval and air force units were also established. During the
communist and ethnic minority rebellions of 1948–1949, the major-
ity of its men defected to the insurgent side, but the Fourth Burma
Rifles commanded by Ne Win and other mostly Burman units re-
mained loyal to the central government. They formed the core of the
modern Tatmadaw. See also AUNG SAN; BURMA INDEPEN-
DENCE ARMY; PEOPLE’S VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION;
TATMADAW, HISTORY OF; WORLD WAR II IN BURMA (MIL-
ITARY OPERATIONS).

BURMA DEFENCE ARMY (BDA). The Burmese armed force that

replaced the Burma Independence Army (BIA). Formally estab-
lished on August 26, 1942, its recruits were taken chiefly from among
BIA veterans. With Aung San serving as commander in chief, the
BDA consisted initially of three 1,000-man battalions, based at Py-
inmana in the central part of the country. Japanese military advisors
on all levels kept a close eye on its operations. An officers’ training
school was established at the former British military cantonment of
Mingaladon, north of Rangoon (Yangon), and the most promising
graduates were sent to military academies in Japan for further study.
Like the BIA, the overwhelming majority of its officers and men
were Burmans. See also BURMA NATIONAL ARMY; JAPANESE
OCCUPATION; TATMADAW, HISTORY OF.

BURMA INDEPENDENCE ARMY (BIA). Established by the Mi-

nami Kikan in Bangkok on December 28, 1941, the BIA was Burma’s
first postcolonial armed force, the predecessor of the independence-era
Tatmadaw. Commanded by General Suzuki Keiji, with Aung
San serving as senior staff officer, its officers included both Japan-
ese members of the Minami Kikan and members of the Thirty
Comrades. BIA units accompanied the Japanese Fifteenth Army
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BURMA NATIONAL ARMY • 125

in the invasion of Burma, and a significant engagement against the

British was fought at Shwedaung, near Prome (Pyay), in March
1942. But its military role was less significant than its symbolic
one. For the ethnic majority Burmans, its appearance alongside
the Japanese, who claimed to be fighting for the liberation of Asia,
marked the end of a bitter era of colonial humiliation at the hands
of the British. However, Japanese unwillingness to grant immedi-
ate independence after the city of Moulmein (Mawlamyine) was
captured in January 1942 was a cause of great disillusionment
among BIA officers.
Thousands of young village men joined its ranks (reliable esti-
mates of its size vary from 15,000 to 23,000), and the BIA set up pro-
visional governments in various parts of the country during the
chaotic months of early 1942. Like the Tatmadaw and unlike the
colonial-era army, the great majority of BIA recruits were Burman,
with little or no ethnic minority representation. Because of their lack
of discipline and poor quality (many BIA men were little better than
gangsters), law and order collapsed in many areas it occupied. At
Myaungmya, in the Delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River,
a race war broke out between Burman BIA men and Delta Karens,
with both sides responsible for massacres. On July 24, 1942, the
Japanese Military Administration (Gunseikanbu) dissolved the over-
large BIA and replaced it with a smaller and better-organized Burma
Defence Army. In the words of Dr. Ba Maw, the BIA was a “spon-
taneous race explosion at a very confused, desperate, and violently
racial moment in the struggle of a people to recover what they had
lost or lacked for centuries” (Breakthrough in Burma, 217). See also
BURMA NATIONAL ARMY; JAPANESE OCCUPATION;
MYAUNGMYA MASSACRES; TATMADAW, HISTORY OF;
WORLD WAR II IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

BURMA NATIONAL ARMY (BNA). Armed force established in Au-

gust 1943, after Burma received nominal independence from Japan’s
premier, Tojo Hideki. The BNA’s commander was Bo Ne Win, while
Aung San served as minister of defense in Dr. Ba Maw’s cabinet.
The BNA was essentially the reorganized Burma Defence Army and
had a strength of approximately 15,000 men in late 1944. On March
17, 1945, Aung San presided over a ceremony in Rangoon (Yangon)
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126 • BURMA PROPER

marking the BNA’s departure for the front, and 10 days later, on
March 27 (commemorated now as Armed Forces Day), the army be-
gan attacking Japanese units, largely through guerrilla operations.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Commander for South-East Asia, recog-
nized the BNA as part of the Allied war effort, designating them the
Patriotic Burmese Forces. See also ANTI-FASCIST ORGANIZA-
TION; FORCE 136; JAPANESE OCCUPATION; WORLD WAR II
IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

BURMA PROPER. This term has several meanings. Historically, it

refers to those parts of British Burma that were directly ruled by colo-
nial officials and administratively divided into divisions and dis-
tricts. They roughly coincided with Lower and Upper Burma, if the
ethnic minority regions of the latter, annexed and pacified during and
after 1885–1890, are excluded. After the Government of Burma Act
(1935) was implemented, it was included within “Ministerial
Burma,” while the “Excluded Areas,” comprising parts of the Fron-
tier Areas, were administered separately by the London-appointed
governor. Burma Proper also corresponds to the divisions of inde-
pendent Burma after 1948, as opposed to the states. Ethnographically
and geographically, the term refers to the central plain and delta of
the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, where the Burmans and
smaller numbers of Mons, Karens (Kayins), and other minorities
live; in other words, lowland areas of the country where the people
adopted Indo-Buddhist civilization and established sophisticated
polities in precolonial times.

BURMA RESEARCH SOCIETY. Established by John S. Furnivall

in 1909 and holding its first meeting the following year, the society’s
goal was to promote scientific and cultural studies on the country. It
sponsored seminars and conferences and published The Journal of
the Burma Research Society, which contained articles in both the
Burmese (Myanmar) language and English and was the principal
scholarly publication in Burma until Ne Win closed down the Soci-
ety in 1980, claiming it was an unneeded relic of British colonialism.

BURMA ROAD. Constructed between 1937 and 1939, the Burma

Road was the main route along which Western countries supplied the
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BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY • 127

Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jyeshi) government in Chongqing (Chungk-

ing) with weapons and materiel during China’s war with Japan. An
engineering marvel, it wound through steep mountainous terrain,
from the railhead at Lashio, Shan State, to the Chinese border at
Wanting (Wanding), and continued on to Kunming, capital of Yunnan
Province. Thence another road carried supplies to Chongqing. Its im-
portance grew after Japanese forces occupied most of China’s east
coast ports and closed down an alternate supply route from northern
Vietnam (French Indochina) in September 1940. Between 1938 and
1940, the volume of supplies brought up by road or rail from the port
of Rangoon (Yangon) grew from 2,000 to 10,000 tons a month.
Tokyo saw closure of the road as essential to a speedy resolution of
the “China Incident,” and, when diplomatic pressure on Britain failed,
sought a military solution. Neglected after the war, the Burma Road
was reconstructed when the State Law and Order Restoration
Council established close relations with China in 1989, largely for
purposes of overland trade. See also JAPANESE OCCUPATION;
LEDO ROAD; MINAMI KIKAN; SUZUKI KEIJI, COLONEL;
WORLD WAR II IN BURMA.

BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY (BSPP). Between

1964 and 1988, the BSPP (in Burmese, Myanma Sosialit Lanzin Pati,
or Ma-Sa-La) was Burma’s only legal political party. Established by
the Revolutionary Council on July 4, 1962, it espoused a socialist
ideology (the “Burmese Road to Socialism”) and operated accord-
ing to the principles of a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary party. Paral-
lel party and state organizations existed on all levels of the adminis-
tration, from the center to “cells” on the ward or village tract level,
and decision making was based on “democratic centralism,” meaning
that power was exercised from the top down, requiring the absolute
obedience of lower-level party members. A March 1964 law made the
BSPP the country’s sole political organization, with a revolutionary
mission of transforming society in accordance with socialist (but not
communist) principles.
Between 1962 and 1971, the BSPP evolved from a “cadre party”
with only a handful of elite members, most of whom were also mem-
bers of the Revolutionary Council, into a “mass party,” holding its
First Congress in June–July 1971. At that time, it had 344,226 full
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128 • BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY

and candidate members. By early 1981, membership had expanded to

1.5 million. Tatmadaw personnel and most civil servants were ex-
pected to join the party. But widespread corruption and abuses of
power led to the purge of over 150,000 of the party rank and file dur-
ing the mid-1970s.
Policy making was in the hands of a Central Executive Committee,
chosen from among the Central Committee, which itself was selected
by Party Congresses. The party’s leader and chairman from 1962 to
1988 was Ne Win. More than two-thirds of all top party officials
were military officers.
The BSPP’s status as Burma’s sole political organization was reaf-
firmed in the Constitution of 1974, which stated that the “working
people” of Burma must “faithfully follow the leadership” of the party
and that it “is the sole political party and shall lead the State.” For ex-
ample, the BSPP nominated candidates for the Pyithu Hluttaw, or
People’s Assembly, and People’s Councils on the state/division,
township, and ward/village tract levels.
At the BSPP Extraordinary Congress of July 23–25, 1988, Ne
Win retired and was succeeded by Sein Lwin. Although Ne Win’s
proposal to hold a referendum on establishing a multiparty political
system was turned down by the congress, Dr. Maung Maung, Sein
Lwin’s successor as state president and BSPP leader, presided over a
second BSPP Extraordinary Congress on September 10, 1988, at
which the holding of a multiparty democratic election was promised.
The BSPP’s demise was imminent. On September 16, members of
the Tatmadaw and the civil service were “permitted to resign” from
it. On September 26, 1988, eight days after the power seizure by the
State Law and Order Restoration Council, the BSPP transformed
itself into a “democratic” party with a new name, the National Unity
Party.
To generate popular support, the BSPP established mass organi-
zations, of which the most important were the Lanzin youth group
and Workers’ and Peasants Associations. Each had millions of mem-
bers and resembled the Union Solidarity and Development Associ-
ation established in 1993. Party managers, or cadres, were trained at
the Central School of Political Science at Mingaladon, in northern
Rangoon (Yangon). See also ADMINISTRATION, BURMA SO-
CIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA.
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BURMANS • 129

BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY, EXTRAORDI-

NARY CONGRESS (JULY 23–25, 1988). Sometimes referred to as
the “Emergency Congress.” In the face of rising popular opposition,
Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) Chairman Ne Win con-
vened the congress a year earlier than scheduled to propose radical
changes: the retirement of himself, party vice chairman (and presi-
dent) San Yu, BSPP joint secretary general Sein Lwin, and three
other top leaders; the holding of a popular referendum on whether the
BSPP one-party system should be maintained, or scrapped in favor of
a multiparty “democratic” system; and implementation of fundamen-
tal economic reforms (including foreign private investment). In his
opening speech, Ne Win also gave his prophetic warning: “when the
Army shoots, it shoots to hit; it does not fire into the air to scare.” The
congress concluded that while Ne Win and San Yu could retire, the
other leaders should remain at their posts, and it rejected Ne Win’s
proposal of a referendum, citing economic rather than political re-
form as the first priority. On September 26, the BSPP Central Com-
mittee chose Sein Lwin as its new chairman, and on the 27th the
Pyithu Hluttaw designated him president of the Socialist Union of
the Republic of Burma. The much-hated Sein Lwin’s assumption of
power incited the massive protests of the Four Eights Movement.
See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY, EXTRAORDI-

NARY CONGRESS (SEPTEMBER 10, 1988). The second such
congress of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) during
1988, sometimes referred to as an “Emergency Congress,” at which
President and Party Chairman Dr. Maung Maung promised that a
“free and fair” multiparty democratic election would be held in the
near future. He confessed that the BSPP had become corrupt and
complacent under a one-party system. See also BURMA SOCIAL-
IST PROGRAMME PARTY, EXTRAORDINARY CONGRESS
(JULY 23–25, 1988); DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

BURMANS (BAMARS). Burma’s largest ethnic group, after whom

the country is named. During the British colonial period, it was com-
mon to use “Burman” and “Burmese” interchangeably; more re-
cently, “Burman” has been used to refer to the ethnic group, while
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130 • BURMANS

“Burmese” applies to nationals of Burma, regardless of ethnicity.

“Burman” and “Burmese” are both English renditions of the
Burmese (Myanmar) language term Bama, the colloquial name for
the people (Myanma is the literary or formal term, with essentially
the same meaning). When the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) decreed the Adaptation of Expressions Law in
1989, the official name of the group was changed to “Bamar,” while
the meaning of the term “Myanma”/“Myanmar” was changed to re-
fer not to the majority ethnic group but to all nationals of the coun-
try, in other words, to be synonymous with “Burmese.”
In the 1983 census, the last taken, Burmans numbered 23.5 million
(69 percent of a total population of 35.3 million). The “heartland” of
the Burmans, where they migrated in the early centuries CE from
eastern Tibet or southwestern China, encompasses what are now
Mandalay, Magwe (Magway), and southern Sagaing Divisions (of-
ten referred to as Upper Burma). They also form the majority of the
population of Lower Burma, where they have intermarried exten-
sively with other groups, particularly the Mons, Arakanese
(Rakhines), and Karens (Kayins). The “purity” of the Burmans of
Upper Burma is something of a myth, because over the centuries,
they have intermarried with the Pyus, who have now disappeared,
and prisoners of war brought to the royal capital from Siam, Arakan
(Rakhine), Laos, Manipur, and Portugal (the Bayingyi). Given the
large number of recent Chinese migrants in Mandalay and northern
Burma, the “foreign” element in the Burman gene pool continues to
be significant.
The first important Burman state was established at Pagan
(Bagan), on the banks of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, in
the ninth century. Raised in a harsh, semidesert environment, the
Burmans were a warlike people who carried out repeated military
campaigns until put on the defensive during the First Anglo-
Burmese War. The more dynamic kings of the Bagan, Toungoo,
and Konbaung Dynasties conquered and controlled neighboring
states in Lower Burma, Arakan, northeastern India, Laos, and Siam,
imposing limited authority over border area peoples, such as the
Shans (Tai) and Karens.
The Burmese language is the most widely spoken of the Tibeto–
Burman language group, which also includes the languages of the
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BURMESE (MYANMAR) LANGUAGE • 131

Arakanese, Tavoyans, Kachins, Karens, Chins, and Nagas. Burman

self-identification focuses on language, customs, distinct artistic and
musical motifs, and a shared history. But above all, it is connected
with Buddhism. Ethnic/national identity is often summarized in the
saying, “to be Burman/Burmese is to be Buddhist,” and Burman con-
verts to other religions, such as Christianity or Islam, are often con-
sidered marginal to mainstream society.
Successive Burman states, from the Pagan Dynasty to the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC), have actively promoted the
Buddhist religion, making generous offerings to the Sangha, promoting
religious orthodoxy, and building pagodas. Aspects of Indo-Buddhist
civilization were transmitted to them by the Mons, especially after the
conquest of Thaton in Lower Burma in 1057 by King Anawrahta,
though they have also been influenced by Buddhist trends in Sri Lanka.
In the early 20th century, Burman/Burmese nationalism began with
groups who sought to defend the Buddhist religion from the corrosion
of modernity and foreign rule, such as the Young Men’s Buddhist As-
sociation. However, the cult of the Thirty-seven Nats constitutes an-
other aspect of a distinctively Burman religious life.
Although Pagan was the first of several important Burman urban cen-
ters where kingly power was established, most Burmans traditionally
have lived in rural communities, economically dependent on the culti-
vation of wetland rice or other lowland crops. The focus of village life
is the pagoda and the Buddhist monastery (kyaung), which also pro-
vided village children in the past with a basic education. Compared to
their eastern neighbors, the Siamese (Thais), the Burmans had limited
commercial and other relations with the outside world before the colo-
nial era, fostering an isolationist outlook that continues to be expressed
today in the antiforeign sentiments of the SPDC. In one form or another,
post-independence governments—headed by U Nu, Ne Win, the
SLORC, and the SPDC—have promoted the cultural “Burmanization”
(Myanmarization) of other ethnic groups. See also BURMA PROPER;
DRY ZONE; ERA, BURMESE; FAMILY SYSTEM, BURMESE;
NAMES, BURMESE; TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR)
SOCIETY; WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY.

BURMESE (MYANMAR) LANGUAGE. Used by the ethnic major-

ity Burmans (Bamars) and members of other ethnic groups who
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132 • BURMESE (MYANMAR) LANGUAGE

have been assimilated into the mainstream culture and society,

Burmese (Myanmar) is Burma’s official language. About 40 million
people speak it, 30 million speaking it as their first language. Burmese
is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language group, subgroup Tibeto-
Burman, and, like related languages, is monosyllabic and tonal.
Modern-spoken Burmese uses three tones: creaky high tone, high
tone, and low tone. Different tones convey different meanings to the
same combination of consonants and vowels; for example, kyaung in
different tones can mean “cat” or “monastery/school.” In addition,
syllables are sometimes “stopped” or “weak,” and the proper pro-
nunciation of Burmese cannot ignore these distinctions. Sentence
structure is S-O-V (subject-object-verb), in contrast to English,
which is S-V-O (subject-verb-object). Nouns are frequently modified
by particles that function like prepositions in English; for example,
Yangoun-go means “to Rangoon.” Although linguists believe they are
not related, Burmese and Japanese have striking resemblances in
terms of grammatical structure (such as the use of particles), which
has been a great benefit to post-1988 Burmese exiles struggling to
make a living in Japan.
Standard Burmese is based on the dialect spoken in Rangoon
(Yangon) and Mandalay; Arakanese and Tavoyan (the language of
the people of Tavoy [Dawei]) are closely related variations. Written
(literary) and spoken (vernacular) Burmese are quite different, which
(along with politics) is the source of the post-1989 controversy over
whether “Burma” (Bama) or “Myanmar” (Myanma) is the proper
name of the country: The former is colloquial, the latter literary, and
both mean essentially the same thing.
The writing system is derived from the old Devanagari script of In-
dia, which was introduced to the Burmans by the Mons. It has 33
consonants (some of which are used only to transliterate Pali words)
and 12 vowels. The Rajakumar inscription, found at Pagan (Bagan)
and dated from 1112 CE, is the earliest known example of written
Burmese, and also includes inscriptions in Mon, Pyu, and Pali. The
round-shaped letters of Burmese are very appealing to look at and
very difficult for foreigners to tell apart.
Many Pali words have entered the Burmese language, not only to
signify religious and philosophical concepts connected with Bud-
dhism, but also to provide formal vocabulary for increasingly com-
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“BURMESE ROAD TO SOCIALISM” • 133

plex and sophisticated precolonial societies, much as Latin and Greek

enriched English and other Germanic languages. During and after the
British colonial era, Burmese absorbed many English words; for ex-
ample, pati means “(political) party,” democrati means “democracy,”
and saika (“sidecar”) refers to a bicycle-like trishaw still widely
used in urban and rural areas.
Colonial-era nationalists feared that Burmese was being relegated
to the status of a “kitchen language” because elites preferred to use
English. During the 1920s, they established National Schools to pro-
mote the instruction of the national language; the Dobama Asiayone
also promoted the national language in the following decade. During
the Ne Win era (1962–1988), the teaching of English (and indige-
nous minority languages) was deemphasized in favor of Burmese on
all levels of the state-run system of education; to some extent, the
policy in relation to English has been reversed since the State Law
and Order Restoration Council took power in 1988. At the begin-
ning of the 21st century, the Burmese language is increasingly influ-
enced by the forces of “globalization.” See also LANGUAGES OF
BURMA; MON LANGUAGE; SHAN LANGUAGE.

“BURMESE ROAD TO SOCIALISM.” The ideology of Burma’s

ruling party, the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), dur-
ing the Revolutionary Council (1962–1974) and Socialist Republic
of the Union of Burma (1974–1988) periods. It is embodied in two
documents, “The Burmese Road to Socialism” published by the Rev-
olutionary Council on April 30, 1962, and The System of Correlation
of Man and His Environment: the Philosophy of the Burma Socialist
Programme Party, published in January 1963.
“The Burmese Road to Socialism” was a relatively short statement
of the alleged inadequacies of parliamentary democracy and the new
regime’s commitment to establishing “socialist democracy” and a
just social order. The System of Correlation was a longer and more
ambitious attempt to synthesize Buddhist, Marxist, and non-Marxist
socialist ideas. Although the latter employed much of the terminol-
ogy of Marxism-Leninism, it rejected “vulgar materialism” and as-
serted the importance of such “psychical principles” as morality and
self-reflection in the building of an ideal socialist society. Eschewing
dogmatism, it admitted the need to constantly reevaluate and amend
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134 • BUTTERFLY SPIRIT

the state’s revolutionary ideology. These two documents owed much to

the socialist beliefs of Burma’s leaders during the struggle for inde-
pendence from colonial rule. Though they made room for traditional
Buddhist values within a modernist, socialist context, they had little ap-
peal among intellectuals or the general public during the BSPP period.

BUTTERFLY SPIRIT. Leikpya in the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-

guage, the widely held belief that the soul of a human being can leave
his or her body during sleep, and that its departure at death is perma-
nent. Animist in origin, the notion of the butterfly spirit is reconciled
with Buddhism in the idea that the leikpya released at death enters a
new body in the process of samsara, the cycle of rebirth; in other
cases, when a normal process of rebirth is hindered, it may animate a
nat. Illness is sometimes explained as the leikpya’s failure to return
to the body, requiring special rituals.

–C–

CALENDAR, BURMESE. The Burmese calendar consists of twelve

28-day lunar months, and begins with Thingyan in early or mid-April.
Because of the disparity between the lunar calendar and the rotation of
the earth around the sun, an extra month, known as “second Waso,” is
added every few years. The months are, in order: Tagu, Kasone, Nay-
one, Waso, Wagaung, Tawthalin, Thadingyut, Tazaungmone, Nadaw,
Pyatho, Tabodwei, and Tabaung. The full moon is a time for pagoda
festivals, such as the festival at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda during
Tabaung (mid-February to mid-March). In addition, other festivals are
held each month throughout the year, such as the Festival of Lights at
the end of Lent, during Thadingyut (mid-September to mid-October).
Burmese newspapers and official documents are usually dated using
this calendar, though the Western date may also be included.
Some of the ethnic minorities have their own calendars; for exam-
ple, the Karen (Kayin) New Year falls in December. See also ERA,
BURMESE; WEEK, BURMESE.

CARETAKER GOVERNMENT (1958–1960). A military-controlled

government that assumed power on October 28, 1958, following
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CARETAKER GOVERNMENT • 135

the political confusion that resulted from the split of the Anti-Fascist
People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) into “Clean” and “Stable”
factions earlier in the year. Prime Minister U Nu introduced a mo-
tion in parliament that General Ne Win, commander of the Tat-
madaw, be offered the prime ministership for a six-month period to
restore stability and create suitable conditions for holding a general
election. Parliament subsequently extended his term for a longer
period.
Ne Win ordered the arrest of many politicians and took a hard line
toward insurgents in the countryside. The power of civilian authori-
ties on all levels of administration was drastically weakened, as mil-
itary officers were placed in control of central and state/division
government agencies. The army-owned Defence Services Institute,
managed by the capable Brigadier Aung Gyi, expanded rapidly, tak-
ing over state-owned and even private enterprises. In Shan State, the
hereditary rulers, sawbwa, relinquished the powers they had enjoyed
under British rule. Throughout the country, the Tatmadaw established
branches of the National Solidarity Association to promote security
and social welfare.
Although the restoration of law and order and greater government
efficiency were widely appreciated, the Caretaker Government was
much resented by poor people in Rangoon (Yangon), more than
170,000 of whom were victims of forced relocation to satellite
towns. Many ethnic minority communities also feared and hated the
military. The general elections held in February 1960 resulted in a
victory for U Nu’s Pyidaungsu (Union) Party, as the AFPFL Clean
faction was later renamed, despite widespread army backing for the
AFPFL Stable faction. Power was transferred without incident to the
new government in April 1960. Many observers view the Caretaker
Government as a dress rehearsal not only for the Revolutionary
Council established in March 1962, but also for the September 1988
State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), because the
latter depicted itself as a transitional administration and also prom-
ised to hold a election, which took place on May 27, 1990, with un-
expected results. The Union Solidarity and Development Associa-
tion, founded by the SLORC in the early 1990s, bears a strong
resemblance to the National Solidarity Association. See also
OKKALAPA, NORTH AND SOUTH; THAKETA.
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136 • CARTOONS, POLITICAL

CARTOONS, POLITICAL. The history of political cartoons in

Burma goes back to the early 20th century, when they satirized
British colonial rule. Most of the earliest cartoonists were Euro-
peans, whose work appeared in English-language papers such as
the Rangoon Times. Ba Gale was probably the first Burmese to be-
come a full-time professional cartoonist, publishing his work in the
Times and the Burmese-language paper, Thuriya (The Sun). One
of his most famous pieces, published abroad, lampooned the Euro-
pean obsession with Mahatma Gandhi’s loincloth, which the In-
dian nationalist leader wore when visiting London in 1933. A fa-
mous cartoon for Thuriya made fun of subservient Burmese who,
wishing to please overweight British visitors who were loath to
doff their shoes in holy places, carried them around on their backs
on the platform of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. After independence
in 1948, Ba Gyan became prominent for his cartoons. But the art
of the political cartoon languished after Ne Win’s military
takeover in March 1962.
During Democracy Summer, political cartoons again flourished,
especially in unofficial “street publications,” often depicting Ne Win
and his cronies as horned demons. Since 1988, both the State Law
and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and Development
Council and the democratic opposition have used cartoons to make
their point. The SLORC/SPDC cartoons, appearing in the New Light
of Myanmar (Myanmar Alin), are often crude, for example, 1999
cartoons depicting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a power-hungry, gap-
toothed old hag. On the opposition side, cartoonists in exile. such as
“Mr. Burma” and “Green November,” have drawn humorous takes on
the grim realities of life under military rule.

CEASE-FIRE GROUPS. Between 1989 and the late 1990s, 22 major

and minor ethnic armed groups signed cease-fires with the State
Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and Develop-
ment Council:
Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA, 1989)
United Wa State Army (UWSA, 1989)
National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA, 1989)
Shan State Army-North (1989)
New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K, 1989)
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CEASE-FIRES • 137

Kachin Defence Army (former KIA Fourth Brigade, 1991)

Pa-O National Organization (1991)
Palaung State Liberation Party (1991)
Kayan National Guard (1992)
Kachin Independence Army (KIA, 1994)
Karenni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front (1994)
Kayan New Land Army (1994)
Shan State Nationalities Liberation Organization (1994)
New Mon State Party (1995)
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA, breakaway Karen Na-
tional Union group, 1995)
Mongko Peace Land Force (Kokang breakaway group, 1995)
Shan State National Army (1995)
Mong Tai Army (MTA, 1996)
Karenni National Defence Army (1996)
Karen Peace Force (former Karen National Union battalion, 1997)
Communist Party of Burma (Arakan State, 1997)
KNU 2d Brigade Special Region Group—Toungoo (1997)
Although many of these armed groups were members of the Dem-
ocratic Alliance of Burma, the cease-fires undermined a united front
among the ethnic minorities and opened their territories to closer eco-
nomic and other connections with Rangoon (Yangon) and foreign
countries. As of early 2005, groups that had not yet signed cease-fires
were the Karen National Union, the Shan State Army-South, the
Chin National Front, the Arakan Rohingya National Organization
(ARNO), and the Karenni National Progressive Party, which
agreed to a cease-fire in 1995 that subsequently broke down. Fol-
lowing the purge of Khin Nyunt in October 2004, there was evi-
dence that other groups might withdraw from cease-fire arrange-
ments. See also BORDER AREA DEVELOPMENT.

CEASE-FIRES (1989– ). An important development in relations

between the central government and ethnic minority armed groups
in the Border Areas occurred in 1989 with the signing of cease-fire
agreements between the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) and four ethnic components of the former
Communist Party of Burma (CPB), which had split in the spring
of that year. The cease-fires, which were tentative arrangements
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138 • CHETTIARS

rather than permanent treaties, gave government recognition to the

United Wa State Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Al-
liance Army, the National Democratic Alliance Army-East
Shan State, and the New Democratic Army, which with the ex-
ception of the last were based in Shan State. Between 1989 and
1997, cease-fires were concluded with about 18 other major and
minor groups, including the Kachin Independence Organization/
Army, the New Mon State Party, the Democratic Karen Bud-
dhist Army, and the Mong Tai Army of Khun Sa (the latter
breaking up into smaller groups). In exchange for cooperating
with, or at least not resisting, the Tatmadaw, the SLORC recog-
nized the armed groups’ freedom to control their own territory,
keep their arms, and engage in business, including the lucrative
trade in opium and other narcotics. Some cease-fire groups, espe-
cially the United Wa State Army, have become extremely powerful
and control extensive territory and drug-related business enter-
prises.
The SLORC adopted the cease-fire strategy, which resembles the
Ka Kwe Ye policy of the early 1960s, to prevent the emergence of a
strong ethnic minority alliance; neutralize the effectiveness of Bur-
man (Bamar) “student armies,” such as the All Burma Students’
Democratic Front, which cooperate closely with the minorities; and
put increased pressure on recalcitrant groups, such as the Karen Na-
tional Union, that still have not signed a cease-fire. The cease-fires
also opened up money pipelines to Rangoon (Yangon), especially
after retired drug warlords Khun Sa and Lo Hsing-han settled in the
capital and invested in business conglomerates. SLORC Secretary-1
Khin Nyunt, head of Military Intelligence, negotiated the cease-
fires and remained responsible for border area development, an im-
portant factor in his struggle with factional rivals within the State
Peace and Development Council. The future of the cease-fires was
cast into doubt, however, when Khin Nyunt was ousted as prime min-
ister and arrested in October 2004. See also DEMOCRATIC AL-
LIANCE OF BURMA; STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT
COUNCIL, INTERNAL DYNAMICS.

CHETTIARS. Or Chettyars, a caste of moneylenders from southern

India (present-day Tamil Nadu State) who migrated to Burma in the
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CHIN STATE • 139

late 19th century in large numbers and provided loans to Burmese

farmers at high interest rates. When prices in the export-oriented rice
economy deteriorated in the early 20th century, the large number of
foreclosures meant that by 1936 about 25 percent of the crop land in
major rice-growing districts of Lower Burma was in Chettiar hands.
Naturally they were highly resented by the farmers, especially as the
ranks of landless laborers swelled in the 1920s and 1930s, and rural
sentiment against the Chettiars was a major factor in the 1930 Saya
San Rebellion. Following the Japanese invasion of Burma in
1941–1942, most Chettiars returned to India. After 1945, they failed
to regain their former economic influence. See also INDIANS IN
BURMA.

CHIN NATIONAL FRONT (CNF). An ethnic minority movement

claiming to represent the interests of the Chins, established in 1985. Its
armed contingent, the Chin National Army (CNA), was organized in
the wake of the 1988 prodemocracy movement, and about 100 CNA
soldiers were trained by the Kachin Independence Organization/
Army. In 1989 the CNF/CNA became a member of the Democratic
Alliance of Burma, but it has suffered from factional splits. As of 2004
it had not signed a cease-fire with the State Peace and Development
Council.

CHIN STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions, with an area

of 36,019 square kilometers (13,907 square miles), and an estimated
population in 2000 of 480,000 (1983 census figure: 368,949). The
state capital is Haka (Hakha) (formerly, the capital was Falam).
Chin State contains two districts (Falam and Mindat), subdivided into
nine townships. The topography is characterized by rugged hills and
deep valleys, and its highest point is Kaw Nu M’htung, which has
two peaks over 10,000 feet high. Two important rivers, even though
they are not navigable, are the Manipur and the Kaladan. Chin State
is bounded on the east by Sagaing and Magwe (Magway) Divisions
and on the south by Arakan (Rakhine) State. To the west, it has a
long border with India and a shorter one with Bangladesh, which
have been the sites of some insurgent activity.
Ethnically, the Chins, who are subdivided into six major tribal
groups and a much larger number of tribal and linguistic subgroups,
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140 • CHINA AND BURMA

are the majority, although there are some Burmans (Bamars) and
Nagas; Arakanese (Rakhines) live in the southern part of the state.
Croplands are not extensive because of the mountainous landscape,
and shifting cultivation (taungya) is widespread. The region is heav-
ily forested. The transportation and communication infra structure is
poorly developed. Between independence in 1948 and implementa-
tion of the Constitution of 1974, Chin State was known as the Chin
Special Division.

CHINA AND BURMA (HISTORICAL RELATIONS). Although

southwestern China and Tibet are believed to be the original home-
lands of most of the present-day inhabitants of Burma, China’s im-
pact on the development of Burmese civilization since antiquity has
been less important than that of India. However, Chinese expansion-
ism has frequently threatened the independence of Burmese states.
The non-Han Chinese state of Nan Chao, located in what is now
Yunnan Province, extended its power into the valley of the Ir-
rawaddy River and waged war with the Pyus in the eighth and ninth
centuries CE. Only with Nan Chao’s decline in power were the Bur-
mans able to establish a strong state at Pagan (Bagan), in the mid-
ninth century. In 1253, the Mongol emperor Khubilai Khan conquered
Yunnan. Mongol forays hastened the end of the Pagan Dynasty in
the late 13th century. Even today, Chinese people are called taiyoke,
meaning “Turk,” in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, referring to
Khubilai’s Central Asian–Muslim soldiers.
In the 17th century, a Manchu (Ch’ing, Qing) army attempting to
capture Yong Li, a Ming Dynasty prince, penetrated Burma as far
south as Sagaing. Between 1766 and 1769, King Hsinbyushin suc-
cessfully fought a series of battles against the Ch’ing that were
caused by disputes over control of the eastern Shan States. A Chi-
nese punitive force led by a son-in-law of the emperor approached
the Burmese capital of Ava (Inwa) but was defeated, and Hsin-
byushin’s military commander, Maha Thiha Thura, agreed to the
Treaty of Kaungton in 1770. The treaty, a face-saving measure for the
humiliated Manchus, committed the Burmese king to sending tribute
missions to Beijing every 10 years in recognition of the superior sta-
tus of the Chinese emperor. Thereafter, the China–Burma border re-
gion became stable. Following the formal British annexation of Up-
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CHINA, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF (PRC), RELATIONS WITH • 141

per Burma in 1886, Britain and China signed a border treaty that
later was significantly revised with the signing of a new border de-
marcation agreement by the independent Union of Burma and the
People’s Republic of China in 1961.
During World War II, Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang/
Guomindang) troops participated in Allied operations against the
Japanese. Since the People’s Republic of China was established in
1949, the incursion of Kuomintang irregulars into the Shan States,
and Beijing’s support for a Communist Party of Burma base along
the border following the Anti-Chinese Riots of June 1967, have con-
tributed greatly to Burma’s instability and provide a major rationali-
zation for the perpetuation of military dictatorship. See also BURMA
ROAD; CHINESE IN BURMA; KENG TUNG; KOKANG; LEDO
ROAD; OPIUM; SINO-BURMESE; WAS.

CHINA, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF (PRC), RELATIONS WITH.

The Union of Burma was the first noncommunist state to extend
diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China (on De-
cember 17, 1949), and it supported Beijing’s claim to China’s seat in
the United Nations. Prime Minister U Nu and China’s premier, Zhou
En-lai, agreed to abide by the “five principles of peaceful coexis-
tence,” which included noninterference in each other’s domestic af-
fairs. Both countries saw the presence of Kuomintang (Guomin-
dang) forces in Shan State, backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, as a threat to their sovereignty. However, illegal Chinese im-
migrants in Burma, the presence of exiled members of the Commu-
nist Party of Burma (CPB) on Chinese soil, and the complex issue
of border demarcation were potentially divisive issues. Border issues
were resolved with the ratification of a treaty in January 1961, in
which China and Burma exchanged small parcels of land in Shan and
Kachin States and China relinquished claims to larger areas. Beijing
began supplying Burma with foreign aid, and a joint Chinese–
Burmese military operation was carried out against the Kuomintang
irregulars in early 1961.
Thus, relations were cordial, characterized by Zhou En-lai and Ne
Win, who himself was Sino-Burmese, as ties between pauk paw,
“distant cousins.” But anti-Chinese riots in June 1967 constituted
the greatest diplomatic crisis in independent Burma’s short history.
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142 • CHINA, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF (PRC), RELATIONS WITH

As a result of Burmese mob attacks on the Chinese embassy in Ran-

goon (Yangon) and the killing of an embassy official, the Chinese
ambassador was recalled, foreign aid was suspended, and Chinese
propaganda called for the overthrow of the “fascist dictator” Ne Win.
With Chinese logistical support, the CPB established a strong base
along the China–Burma border in Shan State that soon became the
most powerful and best-organized antigovernment insurgency. Al-
though Beijing’s support for the CPB diminished during the 1980s, it
continued under the pretext of “fraternal party relations” between
Chinese and Burmese communists—even after state-to-state rela-
tions were normalized in the early 1970s.
The seizure of power by the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) in September 1988 signaled a new era of much
closer relations. Desperate for external props, the new military regime
legalized China–Burma border trade, and in October 1989, sent a top-
level delegation headed by Lieutenant General Than Shwe to Beijing
to meet with Chinese leaders. Thereafter, China sold Burma more than
US$2 billion in weapons, including tanks, patrol boats, and fighter
jets; modernized Burmese naval installations located on the Indian
Ocean; and provided training for Tatmadaw personnel. It has also
played an important role in encouraging cease-fires between the
SLORC and ethnic armed groups near the border (the dissolution of
the CPB in early 1989 removed a major irritant in Beijing–Rangoon
relations). Buttressed by state and private interests in neighboring
Yunnan Province, the Chinese economic presence increased dramati-
cally in the 1990s, not only along the border but also in Mandalay and
other parts of Upper Burma, where a large but unspecified number of
new Chinese residents have settled. Many Chinese immigrants pur-
chased the identification cards of deceased Burmese, allowing them to
live freely in the country.
After 1988, China exercised virtually unchallenged economic in-
fluence in the country, supplanting Japan, which before 1988 en-
joyed a privileged position because of its close historical ties with
Burmese leaders and foreign aid. Modernization of the naval base
and schemes to open a transportation corridor between Yunnan
Province to the Indian Ocean by way of Arakan (Rakhine) State
have been cause for concern in India, China’s regional rival.
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CHINDWIN (CHINDWINN) RIVER • 143

For China, the relationship is not without problems. The powerful

United Wa State Army (UWSA) threatens peace along the border;
moreover, opium, heroin, and other narcotics produced by the
UWSA and other armed groups in the Wa and Kokang districts of
Shan State flow into China, creating major drug abuse and crime
problems, especially in Yunnan.
Beijing and Rangoon’s authoritarian leaders have similar world-
views, especially concerning the defense of national sovereignty,
though some Tatmadaw officers resented Khin Nyunt, the principal
backer of close bilateral relations, for selling out the country’s inde-
pendence to Beijing; this was apparently the motive for an assassina-
tion plot against him in 1992. It is unclear whether the purge of Khin
Nyunt in October 2004 has had a significant impact on Beijing–Ran-
goon relations, but Chinese moral and material support has been a
key factor in the State Peace and Development Council’s ability to
ignore international criticism and Western sanctions. See also
CHINA AND BURMA (HISTORICAL RELATIONS).

CHINDITS. Military group organized by Brigadier Orde Wingate, a

master of unconventional warfare. The Chindits went behind enemy
lines in Burma during World War II, coordinated their operations by
radio, and were supplied by air drops flying out of India. There were
two Chindit operations: “Longcloth” (February 1943) and “Thurs-
day” (March 1944), the latter employing gliders landing troops at
jungle airstrips. Although their effectiveness in destroying Japanese
installations was limited and casualties were high, the Chindits pro-
vided a much-needed boost in morale to the Allies, especially in
1943, and showed how infantry and air operations could be coordi-
nated through the effective management of radio-relayed informa-
tion. The name is derived from the chinthe, a mythological Burmese
beast resembling a lion that guards temples and pagodas. See also
JAPANESE OCCUPATION; MERRILL’S MARAUDERS.

CHINDWIN (CHINDWINN) RIVER. One of Burma’s largest river

systems, with a length of 800 kilometers. It rises in the Kumon
Mountains of Kachin State and flows through the Naga Hills
(Sagaing Division) to join the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River
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144 • CHINESE IN BURMA

north of Pagan (Bagan). The Burmese name, meaning “hole (or

cave) of the Chins,” indicates that the Chindwin river valley may
once have been inhabited by the Chins, although it does not pass
through present-day Chin State. The lower reaches of the Chindwin
are navigable, but only during the monsoon season.

CHINESE IN BURMA. People of Chinese ancestry have lived in

Burma for many centuries. In the British colonial era, they could be
divided into two groups: Overseas Chinese, whose roots were in
southern China (principally Fujian and Guangdong Provinces), who
either came to Burma directly or previously lived in other parts of
Southeast Asia (especially other British colonies, such as the Straits
Settlements and Malaya); and migrants from Yunnan Province, which
became part of the Chinese empire in the 13th century. The former
tended to congregate in urban areas of Lower Burma, and the latter
in Upper Burma, including parts of the Frontier Areas close to the
Chinese border. Kokang Chinese had their own autonomous state,
located east of the Salween (Thanlwin) River in Shan State, while
the Panthays, Muslims from Yunnan, were active as traders and
mule drivers on China–Burma trade routes. Both groups have played
an important role in the shipment of opium to neighboring countries.
“Chinatowns” emerged in metropolitan areas of colonial Burma,
especially Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, and Moulmein
(Mawlamyine). In Rangoon, Chinese gold shops are still conspicu-
ous west of Shwe Dagon Pagoda Road in the old downtown business
district. According to the 1931 census, Chinese comprised 7.9 per-
cent of the city’s population, far outnumbered by Indians or South
Asians (54.9 percent). In the country as a whole, they numbered
194,000 in 1931 (1.3 percent of the population).
Despite the popular stereotype of the Chinese as rich businessmen
(many were in fact quite poor), Burmese relations with them were
generally better than with Indians, not only because they were less
numerous but also because they assimilated more easily into the
Burmese population; Burmese people often referred to the Chinese as
pauk paw (“distant cousins”). A number of Burma’s most prominent
figures have been Sino-Burmese, of mixed Chinese–Burmese ances-
try, including General Ne Win. But many Chinese left Burma fol-
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CHINRAM • 145

lowing the June 1967 Anti-Chinese Riots, and those who remained
took care to downplay their Chinese identity.
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized
power in September 1988, ties with the People’s Republic of China
became close, and large-scale immigration of Chinese people oc-
curred. The widespread practice of selling the identity cards of de-
ceased Burmese to Chinese immigrants made it possible for them to
integrate—administratively though not culturally—into Burmese so-
ciety. Because there are no accurate census figures, the number of
new Chinese residents is not known, but it is believed that they com-
prise around 30 percent of the population of Mandalay. An article in
the Hong Kong–based Asiaweek magazine in 1999 reported that hun-
dreds of thousands of Chinese may have entered the country follow-
ing flooding in southern China. According to a Thai observer quoted
in that article, the inflow has “chang[ed] the whole demographic bal-
ance in north Burma,” and local resentment of the new immigrants is
growing because they control much of the economy, especially in
Upper Burma. For example, in Mandalay they have raised property
values in the city center, forcing the former Burmese residents to
move to cheaper, outlying areas.
Burma has also served as a way station for Chinese wishing to im-
migrate to the United States. After paying an exorbitant fee to be
smuggled out of China (as much as US$30,000), they pass through
Burma to Thailand, whence they go by sea to North America. See
also CHINA AND BURMA (HISTORICAL RELATIONS); INDI-
ANS IN BURMA; PLURAL SOCIETY; POPULATION.

CHINRAM. The “land of the Chins,” a term used by members of that

ethnic nationality to refer to their homeland, located in the moun-
tainous border area between western Burma, northeastern India, and
eastern Bangladesh. It includes Chin State (“East Chinram”), Mizo-
ram State in India (“West Chinram”), and upland areas east of the
port city of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Some writers (e.g., Lian
Sakhong in In Search of Chin Identity) also use Chinram to refer to
the ancient homeland of the Chins in the valley of the Chindwin
(Chindwinn) River, Chindwin meaning, in the Burmese (Myan-
mar) language, “hole [cave] of the Chins.”
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146 • CHINS

CHINS. One of Burma’s major ethnic minorities, most of whom live in

Chin State on the country’s mountainous western border with India
and Bangladesh, though smaller numbers are found in Arakan State
and Magwe (Magway) Division. Census data are unreliable, but they
are believed to comprise about 2 percent of the population. They are
also found in India’s Mizoram and Manipur States and in upland ar-
eas east of the port city of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Taken together,
their homelands are often referred to as Chinram. The Burmese
Chins are divided into many local groups and speak 44 mutually un-
intelligible but related languages, which are part of the Tibeto-Bur-
man group, like the Burmese (Myanmar) language. The large num-
ber of languages among them (more than one-third of Burma’s total
of 107 recognized languages) is explained by a Chin legend resem-
bling the story of the Tower of Babel. Although American Baptist
missionaries working among the Chins in the late 19th and early
20th centuries standardized the different languages so that textbooks
and translations of the Bible could be distributed, no single standard
language was adopted such as the one promoted by missionaries
among the Kachins. This has been an impediment to Chin unity.
However, the missionaries did devise a written script for the lan-
guages, based on the Roman alphabet.
There are six major Chin tribal groups: Asho, Cho/Sho, Khuami,
Laimi, Mizo, and Zomi. Chin legends claim a common origin for the
people and an ancestral homeland in the valley of the Chindwin
(Chindwinn) River (Chindwin meaning, in Burmese, the “hole
[cave] of the Chins), from which the Shans drove them into the west-
ern hills around the 13th to 14th centuries. The origin of the name
Chin is in dispute; it seems to derive from the Burmese language,
meaning “friend,” although some scholars in the colonial era thought
it was derived from the Chinese jen, “man.” They are known as Kuki
by the Bengalis and Assamese, and in referring to themselves tradi-
tionally used some variation on the term Zo, which is said to mean
“uncivilized.”
Before they were “pacified” by the British and proselytized by Bap-
tist missionaries, the Chins lived in isolated and mutually exclusive
tribal groups governed by Ram-uk, or chiefs. Their society was hier-
archical, with noble, commoner, and slave strata. The chiefs were not
only rulers, owners and distributors of crop land, and commanders in
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CHINS • 147

war, but also high priests who offered sacrifices to the Khua-hrum, or
guardian deities. The Chins frequently raided Burma or Bengal in
search of slaves, which led to confrontations with the British, who in
1871 began sending military expeditions into Chin territory. By 1896,
they had largely succeeded in imposing control, and implemented the
Chin Hills Regulations as a means of governing them. But a major up-
rising, the Anglo–Chin War (1917–1919), occurred, and after this war
the Chin Hills Regulations were reformed to make British rule more
acceptable, one of the most important measures being to restore the
ram-uk to their traditional authority. Many Chins were recruited into
the colonial armed forces, and the Chin Levies fought alongside the
British against the Japanese in World War II.
Traditionally, the Chins were animists, but by the end of the 20th
century as many as 80 percent of them were Christians, mostly Bap-
tists (some sources give a lower percentage). Conversion brought not
only a change in old beliefs (though some aspects of the old religion
could be reconciled with Christianity, such as belief in an afterlife
and Supreme God), but also a social revolution, as tribal society
broke down and was replaced by communities of worshippers,
presided over by new elites of preachers in churches and teachers in
missionary schools, a process that continued up to and even during
World War II, when much of Chin State was a battleground.
The economy of Chin communities has traditionally been based on
swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture in upland areas. The old reli-
gion was closely tied to the indigenous economy and social system
because sacrifices of cattle and other livestock were seen as neces-
sary to appease the guardian deities and to celebrate major events,
such as a wedding or a successful hunt. Only nobles and chiefs could
afford such ritual sacrifices, so the old religion confirmed social and
economic inequalities.
Apart from trade and slave -raiding, the Chin tribes were largely
isolated from the outside world until the late 19th century, and
their relations with the Burmans (Bamars) were relatively amica-
ble. The Panglong Conference of February 1947 cleared the way
for establishment of a “Chin Special Division” under the Consti-
tution of 1947 (it became Chin State in 1974). Compared to the
Karens (Kayins), Mons, and Kachins, the Chins have lacked a
strong ethnic nationalist insurgency, although the Chin National
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148 • CHINTHE

Front, established in 1985, has not signed a cease-fire with the

State Peace and Development Council. Many Chin men have
served in the rank and file of the Tatmadaw.

CHINTHE. A mythological beast resembling a lion that guards Bud-

dhist pagodas and temples in Burma. Chinthes are usually located at
the entrance, in pairs, such as the ones that guard the southern en-
trance to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.

CHRISTIANITY. See MISSIONARIES, CHRISTIAN.

CITIZENSHIP LAW (1982). In October 1982, the Pyithu Hluttaw

passed a Citizenship Law that distinguished among three types of
Burmese citizen: full, associate, and naturalized. Those persons
whose ancestors resided in Burma (in the law’s wording) “anterior to
B.E. 1185, 1823 A.D.” were recognized as full citizens, while asso-
ciate citizens were the descendants of people who arrived in Burma
after that date. The measure appears to have been directed at persons
of Indian (South Asian) ancestry who settled in Burma during the
British colonial period. The law gave the State Council the authority
to determine which ethnic groups had “national” (full citizen) status.
The ethnic identity of individuals was determined by a “Central
Body” whose head was the Minister of Home Affairs, with appeal to
the Council of Ministers. Ethnicity, along with religion, is included in
each Burmese citizen’s national identity card.
The law implied that full political rights, including the right to hold
state or Burma Socialist Programme Party offices, were conferred
only on full citizens of indigenous ancestry, disenfranchising
Burmese of South Asian, Chinese, or other descent. Interestingly, Ar-
ticle 15(a) stated that a citizen would not automatically lose his or her
citizenship by marrying a foreigner, meaning that charges by State
Law and Order Restoration Council spokesmen that Aung San
Suu Kyi, by marrying British citizen Michael Aris, was no longer a
Burmese national, were groundless. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN
BURMA; ROHINGYAS.

CLIMATE. Burma is located in tropical rather than equatorial South-

east Asia, and most parts of the country experience three distinct sea-
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COMMITTEE REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE’S PARLIAMENT • 149

sons that are determined by the monsoons. The southwest monsoon,

bringing warm and wet winds from the Indian Ocean, reaches the
country in mid-May or June, creating a rainy season that usually lasts
until October. This is vital for agriculture because most croplands
are rain-fed. The northeast monsoon, bringing cooler and dry winds
from the Asian continent, dominates weather patterns during the
cool-dry season of November to February. A hot, dry season prevails
from March to May. The hottest month, April, witnesses the
Thingyan New Year’s celebrations. In Rangoon (Yangon) and other
parts of Lower Burma, rain is abundant but falls mostly during
May–September. In the Dry Zone of central Burma, rainfall is scarce
throughout the year; around Pagan (Bagan), semidesert conditions
prevail. Higher elevations on the Shan Plateau and other upland re-
gions along the border with China, India, and Thailand enjoy cooler
climates, and the highest mountains in the north, such as Hkakabo
Razi, are snow-capped.
The monsoons not only determine the times of year that rice is
planted and harvested, but also festivals associated with Buddhism
and even the patterns of warfare. Offensives carried out by the Tat-
madaw against ethnic minority insurgents such as the Karen Na-
tional Union have usually reached their peak during the dry seasons;
the coming of the rains halts, or slows down, military operations.

COLLIS, MAURICE (1889–1973). A British writer, raised in Ireland,

he entered the Indian Civil Service in 1912 and served in Burma.
Upon retiring, he devoted himself to a literary career. His books in-
clude accounts of his personal experiences in the country, such as
Into Hidden Burma and Trials in Burma; histories and biographies,
such as The Land of the Great Image, about the Maha Muni Bud-
dha Image in Arakan (Rakhine); travelogues (Lords of the Sunset,
about the Shan States); and historical such romances as She was a
Queen, about a Pagan Dynasty royal figure. Trials in Burma, de-
scribing his years as a magistrate in Rangoon (Yangon), is interest-
ing for his critical description of British racial attitudes toward the
Burmese and other Asians. See also ORWELL, GEORGE.

COMMITTEE REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE’S PARLIA-

MENT (CRPP). In June 1998, the leadership of the National League
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150 • COMMUNIST PARTY OF BURMA

for Democracy (NLD) set a deadline of August 21, 1998, for the
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to recognize the re-
sults of the General Election of May 27, 1990, and allow a govern-
ment to be formed. When this went unheeded, the NLD, backed by
251 elected representatives, appointed a 10-member Committee Rep-
resenting the People’s Parliament on September 16. The CRPP’s
function is to work “on behalf of the Parliament until a parliamentary
session attended by all the elected representatives is convened.” It
has declared null and void laws decreed by the SPDC and its prede-
cessor, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, as well as
certain pre-1988 laws deemed repressive. The CRPP also established
10 subcommittees dealing with such areas as economics, ethnic na-
tionalities, and foreign affairs. The SPDC, viewing the creation and
actions of the CRPP as a provocation, increased its pressure on the
NLD, including detention of CRPP president Saw Mra Aung. In 2002,
the CRPP’s membership was expanded to 13, adding three represen-
tatives of ethnic minority opposition parties.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF BURMA (CPB). Sometimes known as

the Burma Communist Party (BCP), one of the major revolution-
ary movements in Southeast Asia during the Cold War; it broke
apart in 1989. Although communist parties were established in In-
dia, China, and Japan during the 1920s, an indigenous communist
movement was established in Rangoon (Yangon) only on the eve
of World War II, on August 15, 1939, by a group of Thakins, in-
cluding Aung San, Hla Pe (Bo Let Ya), and Thein Pe Myint. The
most important postwar communist leaders, Thakin Soe and
Thakin Than Tun, did not attend the initial meeting but joined
soon afterward. The first communist cell opposed British imperial-
ism, but in July 1941 Thakins Soe and Than Tun, imprisoned at In-
sein Jail, issued a manifesto calling for alliance with the British
against Japanese fascism. After the Japanese invasion began in De-
cember 1941, Thakins Thein Pe Myint and Tin Shwe went to In-
dia, and during the war they worked with the British Force 136 to
organize underground resistance. The CPB was a founding mem-
ber of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), and
in the last months of the war, as many as 30,000 communist guer-
rillas fought the Japanese.
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COMMUNIST PARTY OF BURMA • 151

In the postwar period, communists were divided on the issue of

whether to cooperate with the largely nationalist AFPFL, led by Aung
San, or begin revolutionary struggle. Thakin Soe broke with the CPB
mainstream to start an insurgency in February 1946, known as the
“Red Flag” Communists, in the Arakan (Rakhine) Yoma and the
delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River. In October of that
year, the CPB was expelled from the AFPFL. On March 28,
1948,Thakin Than Tun’s mainstream group, the “White Flag” Com-
munists, began an uprising against the central government in the
countryside.
From 1948 to 1950, the communists, along with ethnic insurgents,
posed a serious threat to the government of Prime Minister U Nu, but
thereafter they suffered military reverses that shrank the size of their
liberated areas. The White Flag Communists, based primarily in the
Pegu (Bago) Yoma, were not entirely suppressed by the Tatmadaw
until 1975, when communist leaders Thakins Zin and Chit were
killed. The CPB’s headquarters were officially moved from the Pegu
Yoma to Panghsang, on the Burma–China border. During the 1960s,
the communist movement was seriously weakened by Chinese Cul-
tural Revolution-style purges designed to get rid of “revisionists”;
leading communists, such as Goshal, Yebaw Htay, and Bo Yan Aung
(one of the Thirty Comrades), were executed.
A major turning point in the CPB’s history was the establishment
of the “Northeastern Command” along the China–Burma border in
Shan State in January 1968. This was generously backed by the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China after anti-Chinese riots broke out in Ran-
goon in June 1967. The CPB’s People’s Army, equipped with Chi-
nese arms and advised by Chinese cadres, became the strongest
insurgency opposing the Ne Win government, numbering as many as
15,000 men by the early 1980s, mostly ethnic minority soldiers, two-
thirds of whom were Wa. Increasingly they became involved in the
opium economy in the Burma–China border area. Decreasing Chi-
nese support during the 1980s and ethnic minority soldiers’ resent-
ment of the Burman (Bamar) communist leadership were contribut-
ing factors in the March–April 1989 mutiny that led to the retirement
of chairman Thakin Ba Thein Tin and other leaders to China and the
breakup of the People’s Army into four new ethnic-based forces, of
which the largest and most powerful was the United Wa State
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152 • CONGREGATION OF THE SANGHA

Army. During 1989, these forces signed cease-fires with the State
Law and Order Restoration Council regime, and the history of the
Communist Party of Burma was effectively over.
Although its revolution failed, the CPB had a tremendous impact
on Burmese politics. The authoritarian nature of the regime estab-
lished by General Ne Win in 1962 and the Tatmadaw’s monopoliza-
tion of political power were justified largely in terms of the commu-
nist threat, especially after China began giving the CPB a large
amount of aid after 1967. In the 1950s and early 1960s, many uni-
versity students were attracted to communism, and Ne Win sup-
pressed them harshly. By the early 1980s, however, communist in-
fluence in central Burma was virtually nonexistent. Communism had
little or no impact on the events of Democracy Summer in 1988. But
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) contin-
ued to employ the communist threat to legitimize its hard-line poli-
cies. In 1989, SLORC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt published a lengthy
tract, Burma Communist Party’s Conspiracy to Take Over State
Power, claiming that student oppositionists were manipulated by a
communist “underground.” Aung Gyi claimed that Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi was influenced by communist members of her National
League for Democracy.

CONGREGATION OF THE SANGHA (1980). In full, the Congre-

gation of the Sangha of All Orders for Purification, Perpetuation and
Propagation of the Sasana (Buddhist religion), held under the aus-
pices of the Ne Win government on May 24–27, 1980. The purpose
of the assembly was to ensure religious orthodoxy and state supervi-
sion of the Sangha. This was accomplished through the establish-
ment of a nationwide hierarchy of monks’ committees on the na-
tional, state/division, township, and ward/village tract levels,
similar to the structure of the Burma Socialist Programme Party
and the state under the Constitution of 1974. The Congregation
brought together 1,219 monk representatives, who ratified rules re-
lating to the organization and management of the Sangha, including
the requirement that all monks carry identification cards. They also
chose central governing bodies, including the 33-member State
Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee. By the end of 1981, Sangha
Nayaka Committee members had been elected on the three lower lev-
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CONSTITUTION OF 1947 • 153

els. Coordination with state agencies, for example, the Ministry of

Home and Religious Affairs, was tight. Although the Sangha was ex-
pected to govern itself and discipline errant monks, it enjoyed little
or no autonomy. The new rules ratified by the Congregation prohib-
ited the establishment of new sects (gaing) outside of the nine already
in existence. By ensuring that the Sangha was controlled by conser-
vative senior monks, the new system established by the Congregation
minimized monk political activism. This was reflected in the ease
with which the Overturning the Offering Bowl movement in late
1990 was suppressed by the State Law and Order Restoration
Council. A second Sangha Congregation was held in May 1985.

CONSTITUTION OF 1947. Approved by the Constituent Assembly

on September 24, 1947, the 1947 Constitution served as the basic law
of the Union of Burma when it became independent on January 4,
1948. It created a system that one of the drafters described as “fed-
eral in theory and unitary in practice.” The three ethnic minority
states: were Kachin, Kayah (Karenni), and Shan (the last formerly
the Federated Shan States and Wa States; a fourth state, Karen State,
was added by amendment in 1951), and Chin Special Division (later
Chin State). What in colonial times had been Burma Proper was
composed of divisions. Among the divisions, the governmental sys-
tem was unitary, but the minority states and Chin Special Division
were granted limited autonomy, including their own assemblies,
whose elected members served concurrently in the Union Parliament.
The Union government, headed by a prime minister in the manner of
Westminster, reserved portfolios for Shan, Kayah, Karen, and Chin
affairs; the ministers served concurrently as heads of state in their re-
spective jurisdictions. Most controversially, Shan and Karenni States
were guaranteed the right to secede from the Union 10 years after
promulgation of the Constitution. The head of state was the president
of the Union of Burma, who served for a five-year term. The Union
Parliament was bicameral, composed of a Chamber of Deputies and
a Chamber of Nationalities.
The 1947 Constitution was in effect from January 4, 1948, until
March 2, 1962, when General Ne Win established the Revolution-
ary Council (RC) and closed down parliamentary political institu-
tions. However, it was not abolished but remained operative in areas
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154 • CONSTITUTION OF 1974

not affected by decrees issued by the RC. Following a December

1973 referendum, the Constitution of 1974 established the Socialist
Republic of the Union of Burma. The status of the 1947 Constitution
(and its 1974 successor) remain ambiguous: in June 1989, a
spokesman for the State Law and Order Restoration Council sug-
gested that representatives elected in “multiparty democratic general
election” scheduled for May 1990 could choose which constitution to
use as the country’s basic law or draft a new one.

CONSTITUTION OF 1974. Independent Burma’s second constitution,

which enshrined the principles of socialism and revolutionary one-
party rule. Its preamble states: “We, the working people, firmly re-
solve that we shall . . . faithfully follow the leadership of the Burma
Socialist Programme Party.” When it was promulgated on January
3, 1974, the martial law Revolutionary Council was disbanded. The
new basic law replaced the bicameral national legislature with a uni-
cameral Pyithu Hluttaw (“People’s Assembly”), the “highest organ
of State power” (Article 41); elected legislatures known as People’s
Councils were also established on the state/division, township, and
ward/village tract levels. Although elections on all levels were held
every four years, the BSPP chose the candidates, and voters merely
approved them. In practice, the Pyithu Hluttaw served as a rubber
stamp for decisions made by the BSPP leadership, meeting briefly
each year in March and October. Executive power was in the hands of
two organs: the State Council, which ran the government when the
legislature was not in session, and the Council of Ministers, which op-
erated as a cabinet with functionally specific portfolios and was the
highest administrative body. The chairman of the State Council was
president of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (Ne Win,
1974–1980; San Yu, 1981–1988).
The 1974 Constitution established Mon, Arakan, and Chin
States, in addition to the older Shan, Kachin, Karen, and Karenni
(Kayah) States; in addition, seven divisions were created: Rangoon
(Yangon), Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady), Pegu (Bago), Magwe (Mag-
way), Sagaing, Mandalay, and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi). How-
ever, in this highly centralized governmental system, there were no
differences in administration between the states and the divisions and
no concession to autonomy for the ethnic minorities. Operating on
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COUP D’ETAT ATTEMPT • 155

the assumption that Burma was basically a homogeneous country, the

constitution did not recognize the country’s ethnic diversity, although
Article 8 prohibited “the exploitation . . . of one national race by an-
other,” and Article 152 recognized the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-
guage as the national language but conceded that “languages of the
other national races may also be taught.”
Between 1971 and 1973 the Revolutionary Council carried out ex-
tensive “consultations” with people in all walks of life on the nature
of the new constitution, and it was ratified in a nationwide referen-
dum held December 15–31, 1973. Ninety percent of eligible voters
who participated gave their support to the new basic law. If the Con-
stitution of 1947 drew much of its inspiration from Westminster, with
adaptations to local conditions, the 1974 Constitution was modeled
on those of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, not only concern-
ing one-party rule but also in viewing elections not as exercises of
popular sovereignty but rather as ritualistic reaffirmations of state
power.

COUP D’ETAT ATTEMPT (JULY 1976). Led by Captain Ohn Kyaw

Myint, a group of younger captains and majors plotted the overthrow
of President Ne Win, General San Yu, and Colonel Tin Oo (head of
Military Intelligence), but they were arrested in July 1976. Put on
trial in the fall, Ohn Kyaw Myint was sentenced to death and his fel-
low conspirators to terms in prison. Former Defense Minister Tin U
was also tried and sentenced to a seven-year jail term for having
known about the plot but failing to report it to the authorities. The
young officers admired Tin U’s reformist tendencies and wished to
change Burma’s one-party regime and socialist economic system.
Following the coup attempt, promotions in the Tatmadaw were in-
creasingly based on loyalty to Ne Win rather than talent.

COUP D’ETAT ATTEMPT (MARCH 2002). On March 7, 2002, the

son-in-law of Ne Win, Aye Zaw Win, and his three grandsons, Aye
Ne Win, Kyaw Ne Win, and Zwe Ne Win, were arrested on charges
of plotting the overthrow of the State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC). According to the government, they were attempt-
ing to win over the troops who guarded Ne Win’s residence on the
shores of Inya Lake with expensive presents and special privileges,
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156 • CROMBIE PO, SAN

anticipating that they could form the vanguard of a coup attempt. The
plot apparently also included Ne Win’s influential daughter, Sanda
Win, but she was not charged, instead being placed under house ar-
rest. Official accounts are somewhat bizarre: the plotters consulted a
practitioner of astrology to ensure the coup’s success; they possessed
images of the three top SPDC generals, which they apparently
planned to use as “voodoo dolls”; and they were hoping to establish
a new dynasty, complete with a family seal modeled on those of Eu-
ropean royalty. The four plotters were put on trial for high treason
and sentenced to death in September; their December 2002 appeal
was turned down, but it is likely that the death sentences will be com-
muted to life imprisonment.
If this was a genuine attempted coup d’état, it was extraordinarily
clumsy, and posed no real threat to the SPDC. Its relationship to SPDC
internal dynamics is unclear, though a number of high-ranking mili-
tary officers were purged in connection with it. Many observers believe
that Aye Zaw Win and his sons, who were universally disliked, had be-
come so greedy and lawless that some pretext was needed to get rid of
them. Kyaw Ne Win had become notorious as leader of the “Scorpi-
ons,” a criminal gang that terrorized Rangoon residents. Ne Win,
whose reputation was sullied by the incident, passed away on Decem-
ber 5, 2002, marking the end of an era.

CROMBIE PO, SAN (?–1946). Karen (Kayin) leader, best known for
his 1928 Burma and the Karens. After a medical education in the
United States, he returned to Burma in 1894 and worked as a civil
servant until 1902. Appointed a member of Burma’s Legislative
Council in 1915, he emerged as the principal spokesmen for the
Karens in negotiations over future constitutional arrangements, in-
cluding a legally recognized special status for the community in the
legislature. He was a strong advocate of a “Karen country,” separate
from Burma and under British protection. Karens consider him to be
a major figure in their modern history, and his book was reprinted in
2001. See also BA U GYI, SAW; KAREN GOODWILL MISSION
(1946); KAREN NATIONAL UNION.

CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE RATES. Burma’s independence-

era currency is the kyat. Because of poor economic conditions during
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CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE RATES • 157

the Burma Socialist Programme Party era (1962–1988), the state

enforced an official exchange rate of around K6 to one U.S. dollar to
prevent its depreciation, with penalties for those dealing in currency
on the black market. Confidence in the kyat was undermined by
three demonetizations, in 1964, 1985, and 1987, designed to cripple
“economic insurgency.” During this period, U.S. dollars were used in
many facilities, such as hotels and stores for foreign tourists. After
the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized power in
September 1988, currency exchange was in practice liberalized, with
free-market kyats readily available on the streets of Rangoon (Yan-
gon) and other major cities. Post-1988 Burma has had three parallel
kyat-dollar exchange rates: the official rate (around K5.5–6.5 to the
dollar); the free-market rate, which fluctuates widely in response to
economic conditions (falling from K60 ⫽ US$1.00 in 1989 to over
K1,000 ⫽ US$1.00 in 2005); and a special rate used by the govern-
ment for payment of customs by foreigners, usually between the of-
ficial and free-market rates. Although international economists have
criticized the multiple exchange rates as an irrational impediment to
trade and investment, members of the military elite and black-market
entrepreneurs can manipulate them to acquire huge profits. For ex-
ample, they can use the official rate to change kyats into dollars to
buy expensive foreign consumer goods or do business abroad, while
ordinary Burmese must use the free-market rate. But when the value
of the kyat falls precipitously on the free market, the State Peace and
Development Council often arrests currency dealers, accusing them
of greedy speculation.
Burma also has had three different currencies in circulation: kyat
banknotes, U.S. dollars (“greenbacks”), and Foreign Exchange Cer-
tificates (FECs), which were denominated in dollars and were sup-
posed to be equal in value to them, though in recent years their value
in relation to the greenback (i.e., the number of kyat they can be ex-
changed for) has declined. Upon entering Burma, tourists were re-
quired to purchase $200–300 worth of FECs in dollars or a hard cur-
rency equivalent, but this practice was abolished in 2003, and the
FECs themselves had largely fallen out of circulation by 2005. Sanc-
tions implemented by the U.S. government in 2003 deprived
Burmese businesses of easy access to dollars, and there was specula-
tion at the time that another hard currency, for example euros, might
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158 • DAGON

be used as a substitute. But as of 2005, greenbacks still functioned as

the hard currency of choice. However, Chinese and Thai currencies
are widely used in some border areas, such as Kokang in Shan State.
The continued fall of the kyat on the free market reflects not only
economic ills but also the government’s policy of printing money to
cover budget deficits. Given paper money’s ephemeral value, people
have followed the traditional practice of keeping their assets in gold
or gemstones; gold shops in Rangoon’s Chinatown do a flourishing
business. Those who can afford to hoard greenbacks or other hard
currency, or invest in real estate (luxury condominiums are popular)
and durable goods such as imported automobiles, which can be hired
out and provide a steady source of income. The weakness of the kyat
and its unpredictable exchange rate fluctuations contribute greatly to
daily economic insecurity for all but the wealthiest and best con-
nected. See also ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE
LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE
AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.

–D–

DAGON. Also Lagon or Lagun, a Mon settlement established around

the end of the first millennium CE at Singuttara Hill, site of the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda (known in the Mon language as the Kyaik Lagun).
Never a Mon royal city, its significance was primarily religious.
Alaungpaya captured it in 1755, renaming it Yangoun, meaning “end
of strife.” Its political and economic importance dates from its occu-
pation by the British in 1852, following the Second Anglo-Burmese
War. See also RANGOON (YANGON).

DAGON UNIVERSITY. Established in the mid-1990s, after the State

Law and Order Restoration Council seized power, Dagon Univer-
sity, located in the new town of East Dagon Township within the city
limits of Rangoon (Yangon), is a major new institution of higher ed-
ucation with an extensive campus and projected enrollment of
60,000. It is an example of the military regime’s establishment of col-
leges and universities far from the city center to prevent students
from freely associating with townspeople and becoming involved in
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DEFENCE SERVICES ACADEMY • 159

political activism, as they did in 1988. See also EDUCATION,

HIGHER.

DANA. “Giving” or “charity” in the Pali and Burmese (Myanmar)

languages, the principal means through which laypeople can acquire
merit (kutho) in Burmese Buddhism. Dana includes offering food,
monastic robes, or other goods to members of the Sangha; con-
structing or contributing to the construction or renovation of monas-
teries and pagodas; and sponsoring ceremonies connected with Bud-
dhism, such as shinbyu. Since 1988, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Council has
embarked on ambitious pagoda building and other Buddhist projects
that enable laypeople to make generous donations, for example, re-
placing the hti at the top of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in 1999, an un-
precedented merit-making opportunity. Burmese people often say:
“dana is good for the next life, and for political connections in this
life as well.” Wealthy businesspeople, including those who have
made their fortunes in the opium trade, give large donations in order
to win the favor of the authorities and purchase respectability. Lists
of donors are displayed prominently at pagoda sites, and the military
government annually bestows special titles on people whose dana
has been especially generous. Visitors to Burma are often impressed
by the grandeur of its religious buildings, although it is one of South-
east Asia’s poorest countries. There are no reliable figures on the per-
centage of GDP devoted to dana, but it must be high.

DAWNA RANGE. A mountain range located in eastern Burma, form-

ing the border between Karen (Kayin) State and Thailand. Its high-
est point is Mularit Peak (2,080 meters or 6,824 feet). The Dawna
Range has been the site of major clashes between the Tatmadaw and
insurgent armed groups, especially the Karen National Union, for
many decades. See also BOUNDARIES, INTERNATIONAL.

DEFENCE SERVICES ACADEMY (DSA). Established in 1955 as a

university-level military academy. It is similar to West Point or Sand-
hurst, offering a four-year course and graduating officers who receive
commissions in the three services of the Tatmadaw. The DSA is lo-
cated in Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin), and since the establishment of
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160 • DEFENCE SERVICES COMPOUND

the State Peace and Development Council in 1997, it has had an ex-
panded enrollment of 1,500. Although the focus is on military sci-
ence, academic and technical courses are also offered, and the DSA
has been significantly upgraded in terms of curriculum and facilities
since 1988. DSA graduates are considered better educated than their
counterparts from the Officers’ Training School. But rivalries be-
tween officers from the two institutions, who comprise the armed
forces high command, have not undermined the basic unity and co-
herence of the Tatmadaw.

DEFENCE SERVICES COMPOUND (DSC). Headquarters of the

Ministry of Defence and the Tatmadaw, located in central Rangoon
(Yangon). It is an extensive area, bounded on the east by Zoological
Garden Road and on the west by Shwe Dagon Pagoda Road, just
north of the city center. Since the disturbances of 1988, it has been
fortified by a red brick wall and blockhouses with gun slits, as well
as a barbed wire fence. Closed to the public, the compound report-
edly contains not only Ministry of Defence offices but also an artifi-
cial lake, club house, and 18-hole golf course. However, some head-
quarters functions have been transferred in recent years to a new
Tatmadaw complex at Eight Mile Junction, north of Inya Lake. See
also PYINMANA.

DEFENCE SERVICES INSTITUTE (DSI). Established in 1951 as a

military-managed organization originally meant to provide Tat-
madaw personnel with reasonably priced consumer goods. It estab-
lished “DSA shops” throughout the country, but during the Care-
taker Government period (1958–1960), it became the largest
economic entity in Burma, controlling 14 enterprises involved in
shipping, construction, financial services, trade, tourism, food pro-
cessing, and other sectors. Although nationalized in 1963, it repre-
sented the Tatmadaw’s determination to control the economy and
was the prototype for the military-owned Union of Myanmar Eco-
nomic Holdings, Ltd., postsocialist Burma’s largest conglomerate.

DEMOCRACY SUMMER (1988). A series of events between July

and September 1988 that constitute the largest popular uprising in
Burma’s modern history. In her speech of August 26, 1988, at the
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DEMOCRACY SUMMER • 161

Shwe Dagon Pagoda, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called this uprising
the “second struggle for national independence.” Following the
Burma Socialist Programme Party Extraordinary Congress,
which convened on July 23 and resulted in Ne Win’s retirement and
the selection of Sein Lwin, the “Butcher of Rangoon” (for his role in
the suppression of March and June demonstrations), as his successor,
student activists led by Min Ko Naing proclaimed the Four Eights
Movement of August 8, a general strike aimed at forcing Sein Lwin
to resign. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary townspeople partici-
pated, in Rangoon (Yangon) and elsewhere. Sein Lwin stepped
down on August 12, but only after hundreds of demonstrators had
been killed or wounded by the Tatmadaw in Rangoon, Sagaing, and
other cities.
After the authorities lifted martial law on August 24, the army was
withdrawn from Rangoon, and for a few weeks its citizens enjoyed
unprecedented freedom. The media were not censored; “strike cen-
ters” were set up both in the capital and around the country (in 200
of 314 townships); and new political leaders, of whom the most im-
portant was Daw Suu Kyi, became prominent. After President
Maung Maung promised on September 10 that multiparty elections
would be held, Daw Suu Kyi, U Tin U, and Aung Gyi established a
coalition calling for an interim government (it later became the Na-
tional League for Democracy). But popular rage against suspected
government informers, actions by regime agents provocateurs, and
an economy in chaos contributed to an atmosphere of fear and suspi-
cion. On September 18 the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) seized power, killing hundreds more demonstra-
tors and shutting down Democracy Summer. The total number of fa-
talities from July to September 1988 is unknown, since the authori-
ties made no effort to identify the dead or return the remains to their
families. However, it is estimated to have been at least several thou-
sand. Thousands more were held in prison or fled to neighboring
countries.
Although most of the events of Democracy Summer occurred in
Rangoon, there were massive demonstrations in urban centers around
the country. Mandalay was for a brief period governed by a com-
mittee of young monks, students, and workers. However, rural and
ethnic minority areas were largely unaffected. Despite SLORC
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162 • DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE OF BURMA

claims to the contrary, the Communist Party of Burma, based along

the Burma–China border, had little or no role in the uprising.
Democracy Summer focused international attention on Burma, a
previously obscure country, and initiated a movement both inside the
country and abroad to replace military rule with some form of de-
mocracy. But unlike Presidents Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines
and Suharto in Indonesia, overthrown by popular movements in 1986
and 1998, the post-1988 military regime has been ruthlessly success-
ful in blocking political change. See also ALL BURMA FEDERA-
TION OF STUDENT UNIONS; GENERAL ELECTION OF MAY
27, 1990; OKKALAPA, NORTH AND SOUTH; RANGOON GEN-
ERAL HOSPITAL INCIDENT; SAGAING MASSACRE; TAT-
MADAW AND BURMESE SOCIETY; THAKETA; TRADE MIN-
ISTRY INCIDENT; WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT.

DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE OF BURMA (DAB). A multiethnic

united front established in the border areas in November 1988, fol-
lowing the seizure of power by the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council (SLORC). Bo Mya, leader of the Karen National
Union, became its chairman. The DAB initially included all the ma-
jor insurgencies, with the important exceptions of the Communist
Party of Burma and Khun Sa’s drug-dealing Mong Tai Army.
They included the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, the All
Burma Young Monks Union, the Democratic Party for a New So-
ciety, the Kachin Independence Organization, the Karen National
Union, the New Mon State Party, and 17 other groups. The alliance
was celebrated as an unprecedented example of Burman and ethnic
minority oppositionists working together. However, the DAB had lit-
tle influence in central Burma, failing to coordinate its activities with
those of the National League for Democracy, and it was greatly
weakened by the defection of insurgent groups, which signed cease-
fires with the SLORC beginning in 1989. See also UNITED
FRONTS, BORDER AREAS.

DEMOCRATIC KAREN BUDDHIST ARMY (DKBA). A progov-

ernment group composed of defectors from the Karen National
Union (KNU) and founded by U Thuzana, a pro-State Law and Or-
der Restoration Council Buddhist monk, in late 1994. Since then, it
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DEMONETIZATION • 163

has cooperated closely with the Tatmadaw in fighting the KNU

along the Thai–Burma border and has also attacked pro-KNU Karen
(Kayin) villagers, forcing them to flee to Thailand. Its estimated
strength is around 1,500–2,500 armed men, and its headquarters,
Myaing Gyi Ngu (Khaw Taw in the Karen language), is located near
Pa-an (Hpa-an), the capital of Karen (Kayin) State. Without the
cooperation of the DKBA, the Tatmadaw possibly would not have
been able to capture Manerplaw in January 1995 because the splin-
ter group provided vital intelligence. The DKBA, whose members of-
ten wear distinctive yellow headbands, has become heavily involved
in business, especially logging. See also GOD’S ARMY.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR A NEW SOCIETY (DPNS). Part of

the student movement that emerged during 1988, established as a le-
gal political party on October 14, 1988, after the State Law and Or-
der Restoration Council (SLORC) seized power. In 1988–1989, the
DPNS organized branches in 250 of Burma’s townships and claimed
a membership of 250,000. Seeking support from students and young
people, it did not put up its own candidates for the General Election
of May 27, 1990, but rather backed the National League for De-
mocracy. The SLORC arrested most of its leaders; since the early
1990s, its activities have been concentrated in the border areas. It is
a member of the Democratic Alliance of Burma. See also ALL
BURMA FEDERATION OF STUDENT UNIONS.

DEMONETIZATION (1964, 1985, 1987). An order of the govern-

ment that revokes the legal tender status of currency notes, render-
ing them worthless. Burma under General Ne Win experienced
three demonetizations: in May 1964, November 1985, and Sep-
tember 1987. They were designed to cripple “economic insur-
gency” (the black market), but the first two demonetizations
offered limited compensation to persons who surrendered old ban-
knotes. The 1987 order did not, wiping out as much as 80 percent
of the country’s savings because most people hoarded cash, reluc-
tant to put their funds in the unreliable state banking system. The
government replaced currency notes in denominations of 25, 35,
and 75 kyats with oddly numbered notes of 45 and 90 kyats, re-
flecting Ne Win’s preference for the auspicious number nine. In
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164 • DHAMMA

response, student demonstrations broke out, the first since the

mid-1970s. Most observers believe the 1987 demonetization con-
tributed substantially to the transformation of antigovernment sen-
timent into a nationwide opposition movement in 1988. Since the
establishment of the State Law and Order Restoration Council,
periodic fears of a new demonetization have added uncertainty to
unsettled economic conditions. Those who can afford it keep their
wealth in gold, jewelry, U.S. dollars, or capital-generating posses-
sions such as automobiles. See also ECONOMY AND ECO-
NOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY
ERA; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE LAW
AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND
DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA; NUMEROLOGY.

DHAMMA. The Pali counterpart of the Sanskrit Dharma, meaning

“law” or “moral law,” and in the Buddhist context, the teachings of
Gotama Buddha as found in the Tipitaka. Dhamma is one of the
“Three Gems” of Buddhism, in which the believer takes refuge, the
others being the Buddha and the Sangha.

DHAMMAZEDI, KING (r. 1472–1492). Son-in-law of Queen Shin-

sawbu (r. 1453–1472), and her successor as ruler of Hanthawaddy
(modern Pegu [Bago]). One of Burma’s most prominent Mon kings,
he originally was a member of the Sangha, who aided Shinsawbu in
her flight from Ava (Inwa). While king, he gained a reputation for
just rule and religious devotion, donating gold for gilding the stupa
of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, sponsoring the compilation of one of
the major Mon Dhammathats or law codes, and presiding over a re-
form of the Mon Sangha, which was brought in line with the severe
disciplines of Sinhalese (Sri Lankan) Buddhism. In 1485, he commis-
sioned the engraving of stone tablets, known as the Kyaik Lagun in-
scriptions, which are kept at the Shwe Dagon. They give the leg-
endary account of the founding of the pagoda and valuable details on
the monarchs of the Mon dynasty established by Wareru in the late
13th century. Other inscriptions attributed to him are found at the
Kalyani Thein (ordination hall), near Pegu. According to legend,
Dhammazedi was skilled in the use of “runes” (magical letters) and
alchemy. See also RAZADARIT.
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DIVISIONS • 165

DIRECTORATE OF DEFENSE SERVICES INTELLIGENCE

(DDSI). Also known as the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), the
DDSI was Burma’s most powerful and pervasive intelligence agency
before the purge of its director, Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, in
October 2004. Established during the Burma Socialist Programme
Party era (1962–1988), it controlled Military Intelligence units
within the three services of the Tatmadaw as well as special units un-
der its own command, which after 1992 reported directly to DDSI
headquarters rather than through the regular armed services chain of
command. The headquarters was divided into nine bureaus with func-
tional jurisdiction over counterterrorism, antinarcotics operations, for-
eign intelligence operations, etc. In the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-
guage, DDSI was known as the Tatmadaw Htauk Hlan-ye Hyun-kyar
Yehmu Youn. With Khin Nyunt’s ouster in 2004, DDSI’s powers have
been significantly curbed. See also MILITARY INTELLIGENCE;
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, ORGANIZATION OF.

DISTRICTS. During the British colonial period, the district was the
“pivot” of regional administration, the responsibility of deputy com-
missioners who had wide-ranging authority. But the district was not
included in the four-level administrative structure defined by the
Constitution of 1974: the national level, the state/division level, the
township level, and the ward/village tract level.
The State Peace and Development Council, however, has rein-
troduced the districts, intermediate between the states/divisions and
the townships, a measure that will probably be formalized by the in-
troduction of a new constitution. The measure has apparently been
adopted to strengthen central government control over the localities.
District-level Peace and Development Councils are the responsibility
of a Tatmadaw officer of lieutenant-colonel rank. Burma, at present,
is divided into 62 districts, further subdivided into 324 townships.
See also ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL
PERIOD; ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA, STATE LAW AND
ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND DE-
VELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.

DIVISIONS. Taing (plural: taing-myar) in the Burmese (Myanmar)

language; refers to the major unit of territorial administration below
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166 • DOBAMA ASIAYONE

the national level and above the district and township levels. There
are seven divisions: Bago (Pegu), Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady),
Magwe (Magway), Mandalay, Rangoon (Yangon), Sagaing, and
Tenasserim (Tanintharyi). At present, each division has a “Peace
and Development Council” composed of Tatmadaw officers, under
the command of the State Peace and Development Council. Under
the Constitution of 1947, they were included in a unitary form of
government and were equivalent to the colonial-era Burma Proper.
The states, corresponding roughly to the Frontier Areas, had quasi-
federal powers, but the distinction between divisions and states
(which also number seven) became administratively and politically
irrelevant after the Constitution of 1974 was adopted.

DOBAMA ASIAYONE (WE BURMANS ASSOCIATION). Also

known as the Thakin Party, the most important political organization
demanding independence from British colonial rule before World
War II. It was established following the Anti-Indian Riots of May
1930 by young urban intellectuals, including graduates of Rangoon
(Yangon) University. Members addressed each other as thakin,
meaning “master,” a term (like sahib, used in British-ruled India) that
had customarily been employed by Burmese in everyday communi-
cations to address the British. Their use of the term to refer to them-
selves was subversive to British authority, but many older, conserva-
tive Burmese thought it inappropriate because the young “Thakins”
were generally obscure and of low social status.
Ideologically, the Dobama Asiayone is described by historians as
“modernist,” but also eclectic, drawing on divergent ideologies popu-
lar in Asia and Europe during the 1930s: the ideas of the Indian Na-
tional Congress, the Fascism–Nazism of Benito Mussolini and Adolph
Hitler, Japanese “Pan-Asianism,” Sun Yat-sen’s San Min Chu-I (Three
Principles of the People), revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, and non-
Marxist “Fabian” socialism. In Dr. Ba Maw’s words, “[M]ost of those
who accepted [revolutionary ideas] did not care much whether the
ideas were black or red or yellow, whether they were from Russia or
Germany or China or Japan. It was enough that they promised some-
thing new and were on their side, as against the colonial rulers, and
held out a future that would be totally their own” (Breakthrough in
Burma, 1968). Along with many other Burmese, the Thakins admired
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DOCTOR CYNTHIA • 167

the courage of those who participated in the 1930 Saya San Rebel-
lion, but they were not attracted to Saya San’s use of traditional Bur-
man (Bamar) royal symbolism and had no intention of supporting the
reestablishment of a Burmese monarchy.
In 1931, the Dobama Asiayone organized a paramilitary wing, the
Dobama Let-yone Tat (Our Burmans Army of Braves), a widespread
practice among political groups at the time (even the Rangoon Uni-
versity Student Union had such a wing), demonstrating that the
Thakins had little enthusiasm for Gandhi’s principle of nonviolent re-
sistance. Their demonstrations during the 1930s tended to be rowdy
attacks on established authority, especially old-line politicians who
cooperated with British colonial rule. Vehemently opposed to the
Government of Burma Act, they set up their own party, the Komin
Kochin Aphwe (“One’s own King, One’s own Kind Association”), to
contest the parliamentary elections held following implementation of
the new constitution. Three of its candidates were elected, largely for
the purpose of disrupting parliamentary proceedings.
In the late 1930s, prominent student activists, including Aung
San and Nu, joined the Dobama Asiayone, which played a prominent
role in the Oil Field Workers’ Strike of 1938. In that same year, the
organization split into two factions, headed by Thakin Thein Maung
and Thakin Ba Sein. The two factions are often described as differ-
ent in ideology: Thein Maung’s, which included Thakins Aung San
and Nu, was “left wing,” while Ba Sein’s was “right-wing” (the lat-
ter included Thakin Shu Maung, later known as Ne Win). The split,
however, had more to do with personalities and power politics than
with political philosophies. A party executive meeting in June 1938
at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda almost ended in a violent confrontation.
The Thakins’ mentor, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, sought to reconcile
the two groups, but was unsuccessful. In 1939, the Dobama Asiayone
joined Dr. Ba Maw’s Sinyetha Party in the Freedom Bloc, and the
two groups were merged into the Dobama Sinyetha Asiayone during
the Japanese Occupation. Though factionalism and ideological
vagueness undermined its effectiveness, all of Burma’s leaders be-
fore 1988—Aung San, U Nu, and Ne Win—came from its ranks.

DOCTOR CYNTHIA (CYNTHIA MAUNG, 1959– ). A physician

who has earned international recognition for her medical work along
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168 • DRUG ECONOMY

the Thai–Burma border. Born into a Karen (Kayin) family in Moul-

mein (Mawlamyine), she attended medical school in Rangoon
(Yangon) and after graduating worked in a hospital in Rangoon’s
North Okkalapa Township, where she witnessed Tatmadaw shoot-
ings of demonstrators in 1988. She then went to the border and es-
tablished a clinic near Mae Sot-Myawaddy, which cares for an esti-
mated 30,000 patients a year, mostly refugees and Burmese workers
resident in the area. She has also started a “backpack medics” course
to bring basic medical care to remote villages inside Burma. In 2002,
Dr. Cynthia won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Lead-
ership.

DRUG ECONOMY. After 1949, when the People’s Republic of

China began suppressing the cultivation and sale of opium within its
borders, Burma emerged as one of the world’s largest exporters of
opiates (opium and heroin) to neighboring countries and world mar-
kets. Although Burma’s opium exports are now (2005) surpassed by
those of Afghanistan, the country remains a major exporter of am-
phetamines, especially to Thailand, where the drugs, known as yaa
baa (“crazy medicine”), have become a huge social problem affect-
ing people of all classes. The development of the drug economy can
be explained in terms of the conjunction of four factors: physical, so-
cial, political-military, and international. The physical factor is the
presence of extensive upland areas, largely coterminous with the
colonial-era Frontier Areas, where soils are poor, water is often in-
sufficient, and agricultural yields are low. For farmers to generate in-
come to survive, the most suitable crop is opium poppies (papaver
somniferum), which require little care and can be grown in moun-
tainous fields. The social factor is that the upland area peoples, mem-
bers of ethnic minorities such as the Was, Kokang Chinese, Shans,
Kachins, and Akhas, have been isolated from the lowland areas of
Burma Proper not only physically (by lack of good roads and other
infrastructure) but also culturally, remaining mostly outside the Bud-
dhist Burmese mainstream. The political–military factor is the emer-
gence of communist, ethnic nationalist, and warlord groups, which
have alternately fought and coexisted with the central government in
Rangoon (Yangon) since the 1950s and have taxed or controlled the
drug trade as their major source of revenue. Finally, the international
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DRY ZONE • 169

factor is both the existence of well-developed drug-trading networks

connecting Burma’s upland areas with markets outside the country
and strong demand for opiates and other narcotics in markets as dis-
tant as North America and Australia.
The State Peace and Development Council has committed itself
to drug eradication by the year 2014, but many observers are skepti-
cal because drug-generated funds, in “laundered” form, are a large
and probably indispensable component of Burma’s present economy.
For example, hundreds of millions of dollars in such funds have been
invested in real estate in Rangoon and Mandalay. Moreover, opium-
suppression schemes—especially in Kokang—have had negative
consequences for cultivators, who have no alternate crops and have
been suddenly deprived of income, leading to widespread malnutri-
tion. As the experience of Thailand shows, effective drug suppression
requires time, investment (especially in infrastructure and substitute
crops), and patience. See also BAO YOUXIANG; BORDER AREA
DEVELOPMENT; CEASE-FIRE GROUPS; CEASE-FIRES; COM-
MUNIST PARTY OF BURMA; KA KWE YE; KHUN SA; KUOM-
INTANG (GUOMINDANG); LO HSING-HAN; MONG TAI
ARMY; MYANMAR NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE
ARMY/PARTY; NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE
ARMY—EASTERN SHAN STATE; NEW DEMOCRATIC ARMY;
PHEUNG KYA-SHIN; UNITED WA STATE ARMY.

DRY ZONE. That part of central Burma located within a “rain shadow”
formed by the Arakan Yoma mountain range, which prevents the
area from receiving the rains of the southwest monsoon. As a result,
rainfall is extremely scarce: about 12.7 centimeters (cm) at Pagan
(Bagan) and 83.8 cm at Mandalay, compared to 292.1 cm in the
delta of the Irrawaddy [Ayeyarwady] River. Paddy rice cultivation
in the Dry Zone is impossible without irrigation. Major crops in the
area include oil seeds (sunflower and sesame), cotton, and ground-
nuts. This harsh environment, semidesert in places and described in
the old chronicles as the “parched land,” has traditionally been the
homeland of the Burmans (Bamars) and the site of their royal cap-
itals, beginning with Pagan in the ninth century and ending with
Mandalay between 1857 and 1885. See also AGRICULTURE; CLI-
MATE.
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170 • DUWA

DUWA. In traditional Kachin society, the chief, who exercised author-

ity over at least a few villages and, in some cases, as many as one
hundred. The status was hereditary, being passed from the father to
the youngest son within chiefly lineages. The duwa imposed labor
service duties on his villagers and had the right to the best portions of
animals offered up for sacrifice to the spirits. But he was expected to
sponsor costly festivals, manao, on special occasions. Usually, the
chief exercised his authority with the assistance of a council of eld-
ers. The British colonial government ruled the Kachin Hills, part of
the Frontier Areas, indirectly, recognizing the authority of the duwa.
Under the gumlao system, some Kachin communities did not recog-
nize hereditary chiefs but had a more democratic form of authority
exercised by local councils.

DYARCHY. “Dual rule” or “dual government”; refers to the establish-

ment of a new constitutional system in Burma in 1923 following the
general contours of the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms in India. Lim-
ited governmental responsibilities were transferred to local nationals
while the governor retained control over more vital jurisdictions. It
provided for a Legislative Council of 103 members: 58 elected by
popular vote from geographical constituencies, 15 elected from com-
munal constituencies (Chinese, Indians, Karens [Kayins], Anglo-
Indians [including Anglo-Burmese]), and 23 nominated ex officio
(by virtue of their holding administrative offices) by the governor. Its
powers were enhanced compared to the original Legislative Council
established in 1897. Under the dyarchy system, the executive func-
tion of government was the responsibility of the Executive Council,
consisting of the governor; two ministers in charge of “reserved sub-
jects,” such as police, finance, labor, and irrigation, who were under
the governor’s authority; and two ministers responsible for “trans-
ferred subjects,” such as forestry, education, and health, who were
chosen by the Legislative Council. The governor was solely respon-
sible for administration of the Frontier Areas and could veto legis-
lation passed by the Council. Still other areas of responsibility, such
as foreign relations, currency, and the civil service, remained under
the control of the Indian government in New Delhi and the Secretary
of State for India in London. Implementation of the new system
aroused the opposition of the General Council of Burmese Associ-
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EARTHQUAKES IN BURMA • 171

ations (GCBA), although a GCBA faction, the Twenty-One Party,

chose to cooperate. Turnout for Legislative Council elections held in
1922, 1925, and 1928 was low. The system was changed with the
Government of Burma Act of 1935, although in that system the
governor still retained control over the most important areas of re-
sponsibility.

–E–

EAR BORING. Natwin in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, a rite

of passage for a young girl in which her ear lobe is pierced with a
(golden) needle; it usually takes place at the same time as the shin-
byu ceremony for her brother, cousin, or other male relative. Unlike
shinbyu, it has no formal connection with Buddhism, and the cere-
mony earns no merit (kutho) for sponsors, but the girl, like her
brother, is dressed in royal regalia.

EARTHQUAKES IN BURMA. Burma is located in a seismically ac-

tive region, and earthquakes occasionally cause great damage and
loss of life. In 1930, a large earthquake destroyed the Shwemawdaw
Pagoda in Pegu (Bago), causing many deaths. A 1975 earthquake
damaged temples and pagodas at Pagan (Bagan). Given the flimsi-
ness of much of the new construction in Rangoon (Yangon), Man-
dalay, and other towns since 1988, there are fears that a large quake
could cause many fatalities in urban areas. On December 26, 2004,
an earthquake of over 9.0 magnitude occurred where the Burma Plate
is undercut by the Indian Plate in the Indian Ocean, close to western
Sumatra in Indonesia, causing massive tsunamis (sea waves). An es-
timated 226,000 people died or are missing in Indonesia, Sri Lanka,
India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other countries. Several hundred
Burmese workers resident in southern Thailand are believed to have
died. In Burma itself, the State Peace and Development Council
has released very little information about casualties or the extent of
damage. According to the Myanmar Red Cross, 86 people died in Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Divisions
and Arakan (Rakhine) State. Investigations by the United Nations
confirmed that, compared to neighboring countries, the number of
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172 • EAST ASIA YOUTH LEAGUE

deaths was small, and probably did not greatly exceed official fig-
ures, but that some 30,000 people were in need of emergency aid.

EAST ASIA YOUTH LEAGUE. A mass organization established by

the Japanese Military Administration (Gunseikanbu) in June 1942,
with as many as 65,000 members by late 1944. Many of its initial re-
cruits were veterans of the Burma Independence Army. The
League had a nationwide network of several hundred branches and
promoted sports, social welfare, and civic activities. Because it en-
joyed greater autonomy than other wartime groups, the League be-
came an important vehicle for mobilizing young people for the inde-
pendence struggle. The central leadership espoused cooperation with
the Japanese, but local League members often had close ties to the
Communist Party of Burma. See also JAPANESE OCCUPATION.

ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST

PROGRAMME PARTY ERA (1962–1988). Following the coup
d’état of March 2, 1962, which put the Revolutionary Council (RC)
in power, Burma’s new leader, General Ne Win, promised to get the
country moving along the “Burmese Road to Socialism,” with the
goal of eliminating economic exploitation. Brigadier Aung Gyi, who
had argued for a moderate policy, including mixed public–private
ownership and a role for private foreign investment, was purged from
the RC in February 1963, and economic policy came under the con-
trol of Brigadier Tin Pe and U Ba Nyein, both doctrinaire, Eastern
European–style socialists. They promoted nationalization of large
and small enterprises, about 15,000 in all; Soviet-style industrializa-
tion; and elimination of foreign participation in the economy, which
included not only nationalization of foreign-owned firms, such as the
Burmah Oil Company, but also the economic disenfranchisement of
Burmese citizens of Indian (South Asian) and Chinese ancestry,
most of whom were forced to leave the country after their property
was expropriated. State corporations were established to control all
economic sectors, including the People’s Store Corporation, a retail
network that was responsible for making goods available to con-
sumers. Most managers of these corporations were military officers.
By the late 1960s, the inefficient and corrupt socialist system had
caused substantial declines in living standards, especially in urban ar-
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ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA • 173

eas. Throughout the country, economic growth lagged behind popu-

lation growth.
Unlike the Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes, the RC did not
ban private use of agricultural land (although the state asserted own-
ership of all land and abolished tenancy, meaning that farmers did not
have property rights in land) or establish collective farms. The state-
run Agricultural Corporation determined which crops farmers had to
plant and bought their rice and other crops at artificially low prices.
Cultivators preferred to sell their crops at much higher prices on the
black market, meaning that rice delivered to the People’s Stores or
Cooperatives was scarce at the best of times and of inferior quality.
In times of flood or drought, severe rice shortages caused social and
political unrest, especially in the mid-1970s.
Following the publication of “The Long-Term and Short-Term
Economic Policies of the BSPP” at the first Congress of the Burma
Socialist Programme Party in June–July 1971, socialist policies were
modified to some extent: A realistic 20-year economic plan was
drawn up, industrialization was abandoned in favor of development
of the agricultural sector, and socialist self-sufficiency was repudi-
ated. However, the plan’s ultimate goal was to increase, rather than
decrease, state control over the economy. Engagement with donors of
foreign aid—especially Japan, West Germany, and multilateral
agencies, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank—
increased. By the 1980s, official development assistance (ODA) was
vital for the regime’s economic survival. By the end of the decade,
the country’s burden of foreign debt—incurred through ODA loans—
approached US$5.0 billion, mostly denominated in Japanese yen and
German deutschmarks. But the Ne Win regime never carried out the
liberalizing reforms that had been promised to international lenders,
and its 1987 application to the United Nations for Least Developed
Country status, to shield it from international creditors, was testi-
mony to the ultimate failure of Burmese socialism.
Despite improvements in agriculture following the adoption of
high-yield varieties of rice in the late 1970s, the economy never
achieved sustained growth, and Burma suffered a new economic crisis
in the late 1980s, including inflation and shortages of rice, made worse
by the ill-advised demonetization of September 1987. In 1988, the
BSPP regime collapsed, and with it the “Burmese Road to Socialism.”
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174 • ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION

See also CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE RATES; ECONOMY AND

ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION
COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA;
INVESTMENT, FOREIGN; LABOR STRIKES; WHOLE TOWN-
SHIP EXTENSION PROGRAM.

ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE LAW AND OR-

DER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND DE-
VELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA (1988– ). The Burma Socialist
Programme Party Extraordinary Congress, held in July 1988, de-
termined that the socialist economic policy that had been in force
since 1962 would be scrapped. In November 1988, after the State
Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) assumed power, it
decreed a Union of Burma [Myanmar] Foreign Investment Law,
which allowed foreign companies to establish branches, wholly
owned subsidiaries, and joint ventures with domestic firms in Burma.
Cross-border trade with China was also legalized. By the mid-1990s,
private foreign investment, particularly from neighboring countries
(such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand) and Western countries
(such as the United States and France), was substantial, and Chinese
businesspeople wielded considerable economic influence, especially
in Kachin and Shan States and Mandalay. Military-owned con-
glomerates, such as Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, Ltd.
and the Myanmar Economic Corporation, played a dominant role in
the postsocialist economy.
Privately owned banks were permitted to exist for the first time
since 1962, and some of these new financial institutions allegedly
have links to drug-dealing warlord armies in the border areas. The ex-
tent to which the postsocialist economy is dependent on infusions of
cash from the production and export of opium and other drugs is a
matter of intense speculation. Drug exports earn groups, such as the
United Wa State Army, hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in rev-
enues, some of which is apparently used for construction of condo-
miniums, luxury hotels, and other projects in Rangoon (Yangon),
Mandalay, and other central Burma cities.
Although the SLORC/SPDC hoped to emulate the successes of
postsocialist China and Vietnam and transform Burma into a newly in-
dustrializing economy, Burma’s foreign investment was in steep de-
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EDUCATION • 175

cline by the late 1990s because of a complicated system of exchange

rates for its currency, the kyat, lack of the rule of law in business deal-
ings, widespread corruption, poor infrastructure, and Western sanc-
tions. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 also had an impact. Despite
its oft-stated commitment to liberalizing agricultural trade, the state
continues to procure rice harvests from farmers at artificially low
prices at the beginning of the 21st century, causing considerable rural
hardship (in 2003, the SPDC decreed an end to state procurement; it
is unclear whether this has actually happened). There is little evidence
that the State Peace and Development Council listens to the advice
of qualified economic planners, and policy decisions are made on an
unpredictable, ad hoc basis. SPDC chairman Than Shwe apparently
wishes to return Burma to a modified form of economic autarky, such
as existed before 1988, while, before his purge in October 2004, Prime
Minister Khin Nyunt wanted continued economic internationaliza-
tion. Close economic ties with Asian countries are likely to intensify,
especially in the face of stiffening Western sanctions.
For ordinary Burmese people, conditions are probably harsher than
they were under socialism, because of periodic shortages of necessi-
ties, high rates of inflation, and deteriorating health services. Malnu-
trition is widespread among poorer people in both urban and rural ar-
eas, and many children cannot afford to attend school. For lack of
other opportunities, many poor women enter the sex industry, not
only in Rangoon but also in provincial towns. The constant need to
give bribes to military and government officials imposes great hard-
ship, not only for businesspeople but also for ordinary citizens. An af-
fluent few with the right connections and access to hard currency
have been able to prosper, and Southern California–style “gated com-
munities” with luxury housing have sprung up on the outskirts of
Rangoon. As gaps between rich and poor widen, the economy of
postsocialist Burma, like that of post-Soviet Russia, is in a state of
chaotic transition, and it is unclear whether it will be able to achieve
stability and sustained growth. See also AGRICULTURE; ECON-
OMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PRO-
GRAMME PARTY ERA.

EDUCATION. Like other Asian peoples, the Burmese have high es-
teem for education and educated persons. Books are customarily
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176 • EDUCATION

treated with care (e.g., they should not be placed on the ground), and
the term saya (hsaya), meaning “teacher” in the Burmese (Myan-
mar) language, conveys great respect. Before the colonial era, mem-
bers of the Sangha were the chief custodians of knowledge, and
Buddhist monasteries operated what amounted to a public school
system, giving village boys and girls elementary lessons in literacy,
arithmetic, and the basic principles of the religion. Scholarly monks
were versed in Pali, much as clerics in medieval Europe knew Latin
and Greek. Colonial-era European observers were impressed by the
high literacy rates of the Burmese compared to the peoples of India,
despite the complexities of the writing system.
During the colonial period, education was revolutionized, as the
British introduced secular and scientific curricula. On the elite level,
English supplanted Burmese as the language of instruction. Many
Burmese who could afford it sent their children to missionary insti-
tutions such as the Methodist High School in Rangoon (Yangon).
Among ordinary people “vernacular schools,” which gave instruction
in Burmese or minority languages, drew pupils away from the
monasteries, resulting in a decline in the Sangha’s social prestige.
The monks were unwilling to teach modern subjects like geography
or sciences, perhaps because these subjects contradicted traditional
cosmologies. A much smaller number of “Anglo-vernacular schools”
taught primarily in Burmese, with some courses in English, while
“European Code” schools such as those run by the missionaries
taught in English, with Burmese usually offered as a second lan-
guage.
Following the student strike in protest against the act creating
Rangoon (Yangon) University in 1920, activists established a sys-
tem of nongovernment National Schools offering a curriculum em-
phasizing Burmese language, patriotism, and the Buddhist religion.
They were viewed by the colonial authorities with great suspicion.
Aung San graduated from the national high school in Yenangyaung
(Yaynangyoung) before entering Rangoon University.
In the Frontier Areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, Christian
missionaries promoted their own educational revolution, establishing
schools and nurturing an educated Christian elite among the Karens
(Kayins), Chins, Kachins, and other groups, for whom a community
without both a church and a school was unthinkable. Such education
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EDUCATION • 177

opened up new worlds for previously isolated and often illiterate “hill
tribes.” Nonindigenous Asian groups, such as the Chinese and Indi-
ans, also had their own schools until the early 1960s.
Although the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime
(1962–1988) was committed to expanding education and promoting
nationwide literacy, it sought to impose a homogeneous educational
system in which there was no place for the cultivation of ethnic or re-
ligious minority identities. All schools were nationalized. Burmese,
rather than minority languages or English, was the primary medium
of instruction; this caused a decline in Burma’s previously high qual-
ity of English-language knowledge that hampered communications
with the outside world. Missionary schools were shut down, their for-
eign teachers sent home. Against a background of economic stagna-
tion, the quality of education overall deteriorated. The inadequacies
of the education system were reflected in the fact that in Rangoon
alone, 1,264 private schools in the early 1980s offered supplementary
lessons to students, compared with 113 state-run high schools and
140 state-run middle schools. A common complaint at the time (and
thereafter) was that middle and high school teachers took “side jobs”
at the private schools to earn extra money and often had little time or
energy for their ordinary students.
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized
power in September 1988, the situation further deteriorated. Govern-
ment allocations for education declined, as scarce funds were allo-
cated for rising military expenditures; within Asia, Burma is one of
the countries spending the lowest percentage of its GDP on education
(1.4 percent in 2003). According to official statistics, in 1994–1995
there were 35,856 primary schools employing 169,748 teachers and
educating 5,711,202 students, 2,058 middle schools with 53,859
teachers and 1,390,065 students, and 858 high schools with 18,045
teachers and 389,438 students. UNICEF estimated in 1995 that liter-
acy had fallen to 55 percent of the population (compared to a figure
of 82 percent for males and 71 percent for females reported in the
1983 census, the last taken). Dropout rates are high because parents
cannot afford to keep their children in school, a situation that is worse
in rural than urban areas, and worst in ethnic majority areas near the
country’s borders. UNESCO reports that 45 percent of Burmese chil-
dren fail to complete primary education.
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178 • EDUCATION, HIGHER

Many if not most teachers, whose salaries cannot cover living ex-
penses, continue to supplement their income by tutoring students on
a private basis, either individually or in private cram schools. Full-
time private schools, including those attached to Buddhist monas-
teries, are emerging as alternatives to the public system for people
who can afford them. Also, vocationally oriented schools teaching
computer science, business, and foreign languages are becoming
popular in Rangoon and other cities, though these are essentially
money-making ventures.
Universal education has been the key to the social and economic
development of most Asian countries, and Burma’s lack of progress
in this area bodes ill for its future. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER.

EDUCATION, HIGHER. Before the establishment of Rangoon

(Yangon) University (RU) by the British colonial authorities in
1920, students could only pursue higher education at Rangoon Col-
lege and Judson College (the latter being a Baptist missionary insti-
tution) and sit for examinations conferring degrees from the Univer-
sity of Calcutta. The establishment of an autonomous,
degree-granting institution in Rangoon had long been advocated by
local leaders. It constituted a turning point in Burma’s modern polit-
ical as well as educational history, since RU students were in the
forefront of political activism during the late 1930s when the move-
ment for full independence began to take shape. At that time, RU had
a coeducational student body of around 1,700 and four faculties: Uni-
versity College, Judson College, Teachers’ Training College, and
Medical College. There were also postgraduate (M.A.) courses in law
and engineering. In 1925, the University of Mandalay was estab-
lished.
It was widely believed that a major drawback of the colonial uni-
versity system was its elitism and emphasis on the liberal arts, which
were primarily designed to train civil servants, while practical sub-
jects were generally neglected. Plans by Burmese activists to estab-
lish a “national university” teaching a Burmese curriculum were
never realized.
During the parliamentary era (1948–1962), university students re-
mained politically active, including supporters of the Communist
Party of Burma, and academic freedom and the autonomy of uni-
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EDUCATION, HIGHER • 179

versities were generally respected. Many students were educated at

universities in the West and Japan, and foreign scholars lectured at
RU and other institutions. During the Burma Socialist Programme
Party era (1962–1988), the regime cut international educational ties
and exercised tight control over students and faculties, substantially
reorganizing the universities. In contrast to the colonial era, univer-
sity admissions policy channeled the brightest students into practical
fields; those who scored highest on the entrance examination could
enter the Institute of Medicine or Rangoon (Yangon) Institute of
Technology. Those with lower grades studied economics or educa-
tion; the lowest scorers could only attend what was known after 1964
as Rangoon Arts and Sciences University, which offered liberal arts
courses. The number of students grew from 19,855 to 97,757 be-
tween 1961 and 1978, but deteriorating economic conditions meant
that they had poor job prospects after graduation, regardless of their
major. Some graduates became trishaw drivers. Economic discontent
contributed greatly to the student activism that brought about the
mass demonstrations of 1988.
Until 1965, Rangoon University taught most of its courses in
English, but the “New University Education Law” decreed by the
Revolutionary Council created a curriculum in which the Burmese
language predominated. By the early 1980s, however, the authori-
ties had recognized the negative impact this had on higher educa-
tion; even the state-run Working People’s Daily newspaper stated in
an article on July 4, 1982 that “over-zealous and short-sighted peo-
ple in power demonstrated their false sense of patriotism by de-
emphasizing the teaching of English in the basic education system
. . . the importance of English as the key to the realm of higher
learning was ignored.”
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
seized power in September 1988, it sought to prevent a replay of De-
mocracy Summer by keeping campuses closed most of the time un-
til 2001. Over the longer term, its strategy has been to keep campuses
in central Rangoon (Yangon) largely inoperative and to establish
new institutions, such as Dagon University and the Institute of Eco-
nomics at Ywathargyi, which are located so far from the city center
that students have little opportunity to mingle with the urban popula-
tion. In addition, the State Peace and Development Council
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180 • ELEPHANTS, WHITE

(SPDC) has established a number of distance education or corre-

spondence courses, which keep students away from campuses and
apparently have quite large enrollments. Both strategies have been
implemented at the cost of educational quality, not to mention com-
fort and affordability for the students.
A special feature of post-1988 higher education is the importance
of special universities for members of the Tatmadaw and their fam-
ilies, which are much better funded and equipped than those for civil-
ians. These include not only the old Defence Services Academy, but
also the Defence Services Institute of Medicine, the Defence Services
Institute of Nursing, the Defence Services Technological Academy,
and the Defence Services Technical Colleges. In addition, elite-track
technical courses are offered by the Maritime University, under the
Ministry of Transportation, and by the Aerospace Engineering Uni-
versity, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, both estab-
lished in 2002.
According to official statistics, Burma in 1994–1995 had six uni-
versities and 62 other institutions of higher education, including
teacher training colleges. Altogether they enrolled 313,477 students
(universities: 62,098). In addition, a growing number of Burmese stu-
dents, including both prodemocracy and ethnic minority exiles and
nonpolitical students from wealthy or well-connected families, study
abroad. See also JULY 7, 1962 INCIDENT; NATIONAL SCHOOLS;
RANGOON UNIVERSITY STUDENT UNION; U THANT INCI-
DENT.

ELEPHANTS, WHITE. Elephants have played an important role in

Burmese history, as beasts of burden (most famously, in the extrac-
tion of teak) and as mounts for battle used by kings and command-
ers. But the white elephant has special significance as the expression
of the power and authority (hpoun) of the old kings, a belief that the
Burmese shared with the Indians, Siamese, and Cambodians. A white
elephant figures in the birth legend of Gotama Buddha. Possession
of these animals, whose physical identification is subject to exacting
criteria, enhanced the ruler’s prestige and signified the prosperity of
his realm. Both Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung demanded white ele-
phants from the king of Siam (Thailand), and when the latter re-
fused, used this as a pretext for war. When Bayinnaung conquered
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ETHNIC POLITICAL PARTIES • 181

Siam and brought some of the animals back to Burma, he bestowed

upon himself the title Hsinbyushin (“Lord of the White Elephant”),
which is also the name of a prominent Konbaung Dynasty ruler.
In 2001–2002, the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) captured three white elephants in Arakan State. They are
kept in a special compound in Insein Township, Rangoon (Yangon),
where the public can view them under tight security. Naming one of
them “royal elephant that bestows grace upon the nation,” the mili-
tary regime claims that they are a sign of SPDC legitimacy and por-
tents of prosperity. Modern-minded critics who point out that posses-
sion of white elephants has nothing to do with economic
development have found themselves in trouble with the authorities.

ERA, BURMESE. The Burmese era began in 638 CE, when the Pyu
ruled at Sri Ksetra (Thayakhittaya), so the Burmese equivalent of
2005 CE is 1366–1367. The new year begins in April, with
Thingyan. The year 1300 (1938) witnessed massive demonstrations
against the British colonial rule, and the Burmese consider it signifi-
cant that Democracy Summer occurred exactly 50 years later, in
1350 (1988). The Buddhist era, which began in 543 BCE, is also used
(e.g., 2005 was 2548), as well as the Western system. See also CAL-
ENDAR, BURMESE.

ETHNIC POLITICAL PARTIES. Following promulgation of the

1988 Political Party Registration Law by the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, parties were established that claimed to repre-
sent ethnic minority communities and contested the General Election
of May 27, 1990. Among the most important were the Shan Nation-
alities League for Democracy (SNLD), which won 23 Pyithu Hlut-
taw seats out of the 57 it contested (the second largest total after the
National League for Democracy, which won 392 seats); the Arakan
League for Democracy, which won 11 out of the 26 seats it con-
tested; and the Mon National Democratic Front, which won 5 out of
the 20 seats contested. Sixteen other ethnic parties won between one
and three seats. In 2005, only the SNLD and seven much smaller par-
ties, including three that won no seats in 1990, were still in existence,
the others having been “deregistered” by the government. See also
UNITED NATIONALITIES LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY.
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182 • EUROPEAN UNION (EU), RELATIONS WITH

EUROPEAN UNION (EU), RELATIONS WITH. The 25 member

countries of the European Union pursue their own foreign policies,
and among those that have significant relations with Burma, some are
strongly critical of the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) (Great Britain and the Nordic countries), while others fa-
vor “constructive engagement” (France and Germany). For exam-
ple, while the British government formally requested in July 2003
that a major domestic firm, British American Tobacco (BAT), close
down its operations in the country, France has established a signifi-
cant economic presence, including the sale of ATR-72 jet-prop air-
craft to local airlines and the participation of the state-owned oil com-
pany Total in the Yadana Pipeline Project.
However, the EU adopted a “common position” toward Burma in
October 1996 that included a ban on visits to EU member countries
by high-ranking officials of the SPDC (then known as the State Law
and Order Restoration Council) and the Tatmadaw, and a suspen-
sion of visits by high-level European officials to Burma. Although (as
of 2005) the common position remains in force, in June 1999 an EU
delegation went to Rangoon (Yangon) to talk with SPDC leaders and
Aung San Suu Kyi in the hopes of promoting political dialogue.
Aside from halting foreign aid (outside of humanitarian grants) to
Burma in 1988, a 1990 arms embargo, and the exclusion of Burmese
exports from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in 1996,
the EU has not adopted comprehensive economic sanctions like
those enacted by the United States in 1997 and 2003. After Burma
became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in
1997, the EU expressed reluctance to participate in Asia–Europe
Meetings (ASEM) if a SPDC delegate also attended, while ASEAN,
Japan, China, and South Korea wished Burma to be included.
However, in 2005, there was evidence that the EU as a whole was
adopting a policy more amenable to “constructive engagement” with
the junta.

–F–

FAMILY SYSTEM, BURMESE. In contrast to the family and kinship

systems of neighboring China and India, the predominant family sys-
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FEDERAL MOVEMENT • 183

tem in Burma is nuclear rather than extended, with two or three gen-
erations living together in one household (parents, dependent chil-
dren, sometimes one or more grandparents), and is bilateral rather
than patrilineal, meaning that descent is through both the maternal
and paternal lines. Many observers have noted that Burmese family
life has more in common with that found in Europe and America
rather than in other parts of Asia.
A major consequence of this is that women enjoy considerable
freedom in relation to their husbands and in-laws, although they must
show them deference (the husband is traditionally referred to as ein
oo nat, the “guardian spirit of the house”). Ideally, a newly married
couple will live on their own, but they may live with either the hus-
band’s or the wife’s parents if it is convenient or economical—there
is no strong expectation, as in China, that they remain part of the pa-
ternal household. Although the family is nuclear in structure, ties
with aunts, uncles, cousins, and other more distant kin are usually
strong because of the need for mutual aid, which is as important in a
big city like Rangoon (Yangon) as it is in a small village. Wealthy
people are expected to assist their poorer relations; for example, they
may employ young female relatives as servants and arrange suitable
marriages for them. For most Burmese in the early 21st century, the
family system provides psychological and material support in what is
often a harsh and unforgiving environment, where social services are
practically nonexistent.

FEDERAL MOVEMENT (1961–1962). A movement organized by

leaders of the ethnic minorities, especially the Shans (Tai), to amend
the Constitution of 1947 to make it more genuinely federal in char-
acter. In Shan State, support for the movement was inspired not only
by shortcomings in the constitution but also by the harsh treatment
local populations received at the hands of the Tatmadaw following
the Kuomintang (Guomindang) intrusions of the early 1950s. The
principal leader of the movement was Sao Shwe Taik, who had been
Burma’s president from 1948 to 1952.
In January 1961, 33 Shan leaders met at the state capital, Taung-
gyi, and formed a Constitutional Revision Steering Committee. On
June 8–16, 1961, a Constitutional Conference was held in the same
city, attended by 226 delegates, including not only Shan but Karen,
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184 • FORCE 136

Kachin, and Chin representatives. Their proposals included recon-

struction of the Union of Burma as a group of “co-equal” states; mak-
ing Burma Proper a single state, separate from the central (federal)
government; giving the two chambers of Parliament equal powers, so
that the Chamber of Nationalities could better serve ethnic minority
state interests; and the establishment of stronger and more au-
tonomous state governments. Prime Minister U Nu was receptive to
their proposals and invited ethnic minority leaders to a “Federal Sem-
inar” in Rangoon (Yangon) in February 1962. While the talks were
underway, General Ne Win seized power on March 2, 1962, and
closed down parliamentary government. U Nu and ethnic leaders, in-
cluding Sao Shwe Taik, were imprisoned. Brigadier Aung Gyi, a
member of the original Revolutionary Council, stated that “we had
economic, religious and political crises with the issue of federalism
as the most important reason for the coup.” Undoubtedly, stronger
state governments in the ethnic areas, a key federal proposal, would
have challenged the Tatmadaw’s growing appetite for power.

FORCE 136. The Far Eastern branch of the British Special Operations
Executive (SOE). Its mission in Burma and other parts of Southeast
Asia was to organize local resistance against the Japanese during
World War II. Largely through the work of Major Hugh Seagrim, it
organized Karen (Kayin) guerrillas in the hill country east of the Sit-
tang (Sittoung) River; and, with the cooperation of Communist
Party of Burma operatives, especially Thein Pe Myint, made con-
tact with the underground Anti-Fascist Organization among the
Burmans (Bamars). Force 136 made extensive use of “Jedburgh
Teams,” consisting of two British officers and a wireless operator
who were parachuted behind enemy lines. The effectiveness of Karen
guerrillas during the 1945 Allied thrust into Burma and the uprising
of the Burma National Army against the Japanese on March 27
were vindications of Force 136’s underground activities, which were
regarded with some skepticism by other elements of the British gov-
ernment and army. See also ARMED FORCES DAY; AUNG SAN;
JAPANESE OCCUPATION.

FORCED LABOR. In precolonial Burma, commoners performed

compulsory labor service or corvée as a form of taxation, much as
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FORCED LABOR • 185

they did in other Asian countries and in many parts of Europe before
the French Revolution. Often, such exactions were highly oppressive,
such as during the reign of King Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819), who
used corvée labor on ambitious public projects in Upper Burma, in-
cluding construction of a huge pagoda at Mingun. The British im-
posed some labor service obligations (the Village and Towns Acts of
1907–1908, although these required the payment of a wage), and the
Japanese used hundreds of thousands of Burmese and other Asian ro-
musha (“labor service workers”) on construction of the Thai–Burma
Railway (the “Death Railway”) and other war-related projects be-
tween 1942 and 1945. After independence in 1948, the Tatmadaw
used forced labor in counterinsurgency operations, and following the
establishment of the Caretaker Government in October 1958 and
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in Sep-
tember 1988, the new military authorities drafted residents of Ran-
goon (Yangon) to clean up the city.
Forced labor—state- or military-imposed labor without any form
of compensation—has become especially prevalent since 1988, in
contravention of a 1930 resolution by the International Labour Orga-
nization (ILO) that categorically bans its use. It generally occurs in
two contexts: in connection with Tatmadaw counterinsurgency oper-
ations in ethnic minority regions, especially in contested areas of
Shan, Mon, Karen (Kayin), and Kayah (Karenni) States; and in
infrastructure projects unrelated, or indirectly related, to the war
against ethnic armed groups. The first is generally more onerous: Mi-
nority villagers are rounded up to serve as military porters, often un-
der very dangerous conditions, and are sometimes used as “human
mine sweepers” or “human shields” in operations against insurgents.
The death rate is high, women porters are often sexually abused, and
families suffer economically because able-bodied people taken away
for porterage, often for very long periods of time, are unavailable for
farming.
Since 1988, the government has promoted the construction of new
highways, bridges, and dams, routinely using forced labor. Some proj-
ects, such as the railway between Ye and Tavoy (Dawei), described as
a second “Death Railway,” and the Yadana Pipeline Project, built
with foreign investment, have exacted a high cost in worker fatali-
ties, while others, such as forcing residents of Mandalay to clean up
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186 • FORCED RELOCATION

the moat around Mandalay Palace in preparation for “Visit Myan-

mar Year” in the mid-1990s, imposed great hardship and inconven-
ience especially on elderly citizens, who were not exempted from la-
bor service. Prisoners, including political prisoners, have also been
used on forced labor details. In addition, local people living around
military bases have been obliged to provide uncompensated services
for army “income generation projects,” such as logging and shrimp
cultivation. When workers are needed, local military authorities send
orders to village headmen demanding a certain number, often enclos-
ing a bullet to show what will happen if the order is not followed. In-
dividuals often can pay the military to purchase an exemption, al-
though the amount is usually more than the average person can afford.
On July 2, 1998, the ILO published a report, Forced Labour in
Myanmar (Burma), drawn from extensive eyewitness accounts that
told of severe abuses nationwide. Faced with the prospect of sanc-
tions by ILO member countries, which were recommended by its
Governing Body in November 2000, the State Peace and Develop-
ment Council (SPDC) allowed a high-level inspection team of ILO
experts in September–October 2001 to visit sites freely. They re-
ported that although the situation had improved since 1998 in con-
nection with civilian infrastructure projects, military bases continued
to use forced labor. Its use in insurgent-contested areas, which are
usually remote and difficult to inspect, continues to be widespread.
To monitor the SPDC’s promise to abolish the practice, an ILO liai-
son office was established in Rangoon.
In the past, the SPDC has argued that “contributions” of labor by
the people were a part of Burmese tradition. But state-imposed forced
labor must be distinguished from community-based projects, such as
the construction of pagodas by villagers, where the donation of labor
is voluntary or at most a matter of social pressure. Since 1988, how-
ever, some Tatmadaw-sponsored pagoda projects have also used
forced labor. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA; UNITED
NATIONS IN BURMA.

FORCED RELOCATION (INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT). The

prevalence of forced relocation of urban and rural residents in Burma
since 1988 reflects both the strategic and economic priorities of the
State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC; after 1997
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FORCED RELOCATION • 187

known as the State Peace and Development Council) and the lack
of firm legal guarantees of property rights. In precolonial times,
Burma’s land was considered the property of the king, and post-
independence constitutions have asserted that land rights rest ulti-
mately with the state. The most extensive forced relocations have oc-
curred in ethnic minority areas, in connection with the Tatmadaw’s
counterinsurgency operations. In the mid-1990s, at least 300,000 per-
sons in eight townships in central Shan State were forced to leave
their villages and resettle in military-controlled sites that resembled
the “strategic hamlets” of the Vietnam War. This policy was an ap-
plication of the “Four Cuts,” designed to eliminate popular bases of
support for insurgents, in this case the Shan State Army. Relocation
of villagers on a large scale has also occurred in Karen (Kayin),
Kayah (Karenni), Mon, and Arakan (Rakhine) States.
Urban forced relocation, involving mostly Burmans, can be traced
back to the Caretaker Government of 1958–1960, which moved
some 170,000 squatters and other poor people out of central Ran-
goon (Yangon) to new townships in Thaketa and North and South
Okkalapa. After the SLORC seized power, several hundred thou-
sand people (no exact figure is available) were moved from down-
town Rangoon to other new towns, such as North and South Dagon
and Hlaing Thayar, located beyond the old city limits. Most, though
not all, of these moves were involuntary. The government took the
measure to ensure that popular uprisings like Democracy Summer
would not recur, since not only squatters but communities where pro-
testers were sheltered, including people living in substantial housing,
were singled out for relocation. In another case of relocation, the
Main Campus of Rangoon (Yangon) University, a center of protest
in 1988, has been largely closed down, and most undergraduates pur-
sue their studies at distant outlying campuses, such as Dagon Uni-
versity, a policy designed to keep concentrations of students distant
from city residents.
Construction of new highways and other facilities under the spon-
sorship of the Yangon City Development Committee has resulted in
additional relocations; as highways are widened and improved, adja-
cent houses are torn down and replaced with multistory structures.
City residents living on prime land slated for development by private
but junta-connected firms have little or no legal recourse to prevent
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188 • FOREIGN RELATIONS

destruction of their neighborhoods. Similar situations exist in other

large urban areas, such as Mandalay, and in smaller communities
such as the village located within the ruins of Pagan (Bagan), which
was closed down by the authorities in 1990, its residents forced to
move to an undeveloped area, to improve access to the archeological
area.
Victims of forced relocation often find that the areas to which they
have been moved lack such basic amenities as water, suitable crop-
lands, and transportation. In minority regions like Shan State, people
who leave resettlement areas to retrieve food stored in their old vil-
lages have sometimes been shot by the army, which regards areas
cleared of inhabitants as free-fire zones. The exact number of inter-
nally displaced people is not known, but it has been estimated by in-
ternational agencies at from 600,000 to one million. Because of the
lack of physical and economic security, many become refugees in
neighboring countries. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

FOREIGN RELATIONS. After Burma became an independent state

in January 1948, the government of Prime Minister U Nu adopted a
foreign policy based on the principles of neutralism and nonalign-
ment, a trend that became more pronounced as the Cold War intensi-
fied in the 1950s, and the Burmese prime minister joined other Asian
and African leaders at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia.
Participants at the conference sought a “third way” between the type
of communist revolution promoted by Russia (the Soviet Union) and
the People’s Republic of China and the “Free World” capitalism of
the former imperial powers and the United States. U Nu had espe-
cially close ties to another prominent nonaligned leader, Prime Min-
ister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, but also promoted friendly relations
with anticommunist Thailand. One of Burma’s earliest diplomatic
crises involved Kuomintang (Guomindang) troops from China,
who, with U.S. backing, attempted to establish anticommunist bases
in Shan State in the 1950s. Although this caused serious problems in
relations with Washington, Burma accepted foreign aid from West-
ern countries, Japan (in the form of war reparations), and the Soviet
Union.
When parliamentary government was ended by General Ne Win
in March 1962, the commitment to “positive neutrality” and non-
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FOREIGN RELATIONS • 189

alignment continued, but Ne Win added another theme: isolation-

ism. Foreign firms were nationalized; trade with foreign countries
declined steeply (except through the black market) because of the
socialist commitment to economic autarky; South Asian (Indian and
Pakistani) businesspeople were forced out of the country; cultural
ties, including academic exchanges, with foreign countries were
cut; and tourists were prohibited from entering the country until
1970, when a week-long visa was granted to generate foreign ex-
change. The Anti-Chinese Riots of June 1967 led to a diplomatic
crisis with Beijing. The following year, the Chinese supported the
establishment of a powerful Communist Party of Burma (CPB)
base along the China–Shan State border that offered stiff resistance
to central government troops until the CPB broke up in early 1989.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Ne Win’s personal style of diplo-
macy seemed to gravitate toward the West, as his regime accepted
hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid from West Germany,
Great Britain, and above all Japan, which had close ties to the
United States. There was some resumption of cultural and other ex-
changes, although the Ne Win government remained basically very
suspicious of foreigners.
The power seizure by the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) in September 1988 changed Burma’s foreign re-
lations in fundamental ways: a new military-owned, state capitalist
economy supplanted socialism, and the SLORC actively sought for-
eign private investment; relations with China grew close, particu-
larly after the collapse of the CPB; and because of the new military
regime’s violations of human rights, relations with the United
States and the European Union deteriorated sharply, with Western
governments imposing limited economic and other sanctions. Many
observers believe that the post-1988 regime has effectively aban-
doned neutrality because of its close ties with China, whose support
in the military, economic, and diplomatic spheres has allowed it to
turn a deaf ear to criticism from the West. Burma’s achievement of
membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) in July 1997 marked a major break with the isolationism
of the pre-1988 era, and relations have also improved with South
Asian neighbors India and Bangladesh. In sum, the leaders of
the State Peace and Development Council (as the SLORC was
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190 • FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN BURMA

renamed in 1997) have exhibited considerable pragmatism and flex-

ibility in their relations with other Asian states, in sharp contrast to
the political hard line taken inside the country against domestic op-
position. See also AUSTRALIA, RELATIONS WITH; BOUND-
ARIES, INTERNATIONAL; BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH;
CHINA AND BURMA (HISTORICAL RELATIONS); GER-
MANY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC, RELATIONS WITH; GREATER
MEKONG SUBREGION; INVESTMENT, FOREIGN; KOREA,
NORTH, RELATIONS WITH; KOREA, SOUTH, RELATIONS
WITH; MALAYSIA, RELATIONS WITH; NORDIC COUNTRIES
AND BURMA; SANCTIONS; SINGAPORE, RELATIONS WITH;
THAILAND (SIAM) AND BURMA; THAILAND, RELATIONS
WITH; UNITED NATIONS IN BURMA.

FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN BURMA. Burma is blessed with

rich forest resources. However, since 1988 the irresponsible ex-
ploitation of forests both by pro- and antigovernment groups has
caused rapid deforestation—as much as 1.4 percent annually during
the 1990s. It is estimated that at independence in 1948, forests cov-
ered 70 percent of Burma’s land area, and that currently there is only
41–42 percent forest cover (27.2 million hectares), still one of the
highest in Southeast Asia.
Seventy-five percent of Burma’s forests are tropical; the other 25
percent, located in northern areas, are temperate. Historically and
commercially, the most important tree species is teak (Tectona gran-
dis; kyun in Burmese); Burma possesses about 70 percent of the
world’s teak reserves. During the dynastic period, teak was a royal
monopoly, and both British colonial and independent Burmese gov-
ernments claimed teak forests as state property, meaning that the state
has the authority to control logging, usually carried out on a conces-
sionary basis by private firms. Teak has been used for construction of
royal palaces, Buddhist monasteries, traditional and Western-style
houses, furniture, and ships. Because of its high quality, there is con-
siderable international demand at present for teak furniture, flooring,
and decks for ships, a major reason for Burma’s alarming deforesta-
tion. Other important hardwoods are pyinkado or Burmese ironwood
(Xylia dolabriformis), used for bridges, docks, and railroad ties, and
padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus), used for bullock carts, boats,
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FORESTS AND FORESTRY IN BURMA • 191

and housing. In (Dipterocarpus tuberculatus), a tree yielding an infe-

rior type of wood, has been widely used for building low-cost houses,
carts, and boats. Resin from the thitsi tree is used in traditional lac-
querware.
When the British annexed Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) and Moul-
mein (Mawlamyine) following the First Anglo-Burmese War, they
allowed unregulated exploitation, which within decades stripped
these areas of most of their forest cover. Hardwoods were used pri-
marily for ship construction. In 1856, following the annexation of
Lower Burma, the colonial government established the Forest De-
partment, which enforced strict conservation of teak and other trees.
The Brandis Selection System (named for the official, Dietrich Bran-
dis, who was the Forest Department’s first director and initiated sci-
entific logging in Burma) guaranteed sustainable exploitation by de-
termining that only trees with a girth of at least 6.5 to 7.6 feet could
be felled. Logging became a principal source of revenue for the
Province of Burma. On the eve of World War II (1939–1940),
British Burma produced 447,000 tons of timber, an amount unsur-
passed in the postwar era. Yet colonial-era forests remained largely
intact. Colonial-era loggers used elephants to move the logs to rivers,
where they were floated in huge rafts down to sawmills. The most
valuable forests were found in the teak-rich Pegu Yoma uplands of
central Burma.
After independence in 1948, forest conservation was hampered by
political instability and insurgency. Central governments attempted
to enforce modified versions of the Brandis Selection System, but
border area insurgents, especially the Karen National Union, con-
trolled extensive forest lands and made money from sale of hard-
woods to neighboring countries, especially Thailand.
After it seized power on September 18, 1988, the State Law and
Order Restoration Council (SLORC) found itself desperately short
of hard currency. Following a state visit by Thai army commander
Chaovalit Yongchaiyudh in December, SLORC concluded five-year
concessionary agreements with 42 Thai firms to exploit forests inside
the Burmese border. Clear cutting became rampant as the licensees
sought to make as quick a profit as possible. Although these conces-
sions were shut down in 1993, unregulated export of Burmese hard-
woods into Thailand continues. At the beginning of the 21st century,
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192 • “FOUR CUTS”

it is surpassed in scale by logging operations along the Burma–China

border involving local businesspeople and armed groups that have
signed cease-fires with the central government. Despite passing a
Forest Law in 1992, the post-1988 military regime has been unable
or unwilling to slow the pace of deforestation, and many observers
fear that hardwood forests will disappear within a generation.

“FOUR CUTS” (PYAT LEI PYAT). An integrated counterinsurgency

strategy adopted by the Tatmadaw in the late 1960s to deny (“cut”)
food, funds, information, and recruits to ethnic minority or commu-
nist insurgents. The “Four Cuts” resembles the British “new villages”
program used during Malaya’s Emergency (1948–1960) and the
“strategic hamlets” program carried out by U.S. forces in South Viet-
nam. The countryside was divided into three zones: black (where in-
surgents exercise control), brown (disputed by insurgent and govern-
ment forces), and white (insurgent-free). Villagers in black or brown
areas were forcibly relocated to “strategic villages,” and the adjoin-
ing territory was turned into a “free-fire zone” where the Army could
with impunity eliminate anyone suspected of being an insurgent, in-
cluding villagers in search of food stored in their evacuated settle-
ments. Although the cease-fires initiated in 1989 ended Tatmadaw
counteinsurgency operations in many ethnic minority areas, the
“Four Cuts” are practiced in areas where resistance against the cen-
tral government continues. In the mid-1990s, for example, an esti-
mated 300,000 people in central Shan State were forcibly relocated
to new settlements in order to uproot popular support for the Shan
State Army. See also FORCED RELOCATION; HUMAN RIGHTS
IN BURMA.

FOUR EIGHTS (8.8.88) MOVEMENT. The general strike that began

early on the morning of August 8, 1988, seeking to force the resigna-
tion of Sein Lwin as chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme
Party and president of Burma. Organized by student activists, it in-
volved hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens in street demon-
strations in Rangoon (Yangon) and other cities. The demonstrators
were peaceful and well disciplined but nevertheless were fired upon
by the Tatmadaw in central Rangoon (near the Sule Pagoda and
Town Hall) shortly before midnight. The choice of that date reflected
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FRONTIER AREAS • 193

the belief that eight is an inauspicious number for rulers; in the “three
eights” year of the Burmese Era (888; 1526–1527 CE), Ava (Inwa)
fell to the Shan (Tai) usurper, Thohanbwa, beginning an era of anar-
chy and destruction. See also ALL BURMA FEDERATION OF STU-
DENT UNIONS; DEMOCRACY SUMMER; MIN KO NAING.

FOURTH BURMA RIFLES (4th BURIFS). One of three Burma Ri-

fles (Burif) battalions established following the September 1945
Kandy Conference between Aung San and Lord Louis Mountbat-
ten, which was entirely composed of Burman (Bamar) soldiers
from the former Patriotic Burmese Forces. The battalion was placed
under the command of Ne Win. During the Communist Party of
Burma and Karen (Kayin) uprisings of 1948–1949, it was one of the
few military units to remain loyal to the government of Prime Minis-
ter U Nu. Some of Ne Win’s Fourth Burma Rifles subordinates be-
came prominent in the 1958–1962 Caretaker Government and the
military regime he established in March 1962, including Sein Lwin,
Aung Gyi, and Tin Pe. See also BURMA ARMY.

FREEDOM BLOC. Known in the Burmese (Myanmar) language as

the Htwet Yat Gaing, “Association of the Way Out”; established in
October 1939 as an alliance of the Sinyetha Party, the Dobama Asi-
ayone, and the All Burma Students Union. It asserted Burma’s right
to self-government. By 1941, most of its leaders were in jail or un-
derground. Its president was Ba Maw and its secretary-general was
Aung San.

FRONTIER AREAS. Historically, those areas of Burma outside of

Burma Proper where the British colonial government allowed local
rulers, such as the sawbwas of the Shans and the Karenni, consider-
able autonomy under the surveillance of British residents. In 1922, the
Burma Frontier Service was established, separate from the officials
who administered Burma Proper. Following implementation of the
Government of Burma Act (1935), the Frontier Areas were divided
into Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas (or “Part I” and “Part II”
areas). The former remained entirely outside the authority of the
elected legislature, being the responsibility of the governor, while the
latter were the responsibility of the legislature and, in some cases,
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194 • FRONTIER AREAS COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY

could elect representatives. Geographically and ethnically, “Frontier

Areas” refers to the upland and mountainous areas surrounding the
central lowlands, bordering India, China, Thailand, and Laos,
which are inhabited by ethnic minorities, such as the Shans, Chins,
Kachins, and Karennis. Comprising about 40–45 percent of the land
area of modern Burma, the Frontier Areas included the Shan States
and Wa districts, the Karenni states, the Karen hills, the Arakan Hill
Tracts, the Chin Hills, the Kachin Hills, the Naga Hills, and a num-
ber of smaller jurisdictions.
Burmese nationalists have accused the British colonialists of sep-
arating the country into Burma Proper and Frontier Areas, zones that
had little opportunity for political association, in order to “divide and
rule.” The British claimed that the Frontier Areas, lacking modern
economic or social development, required a period of special tutelage
before achieving equal status and integration with Burma Proper. See
also AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREEMENT; PANGLONG CON-
FERENCE.

FRONTIER AREAS COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY (FACE). One

of the conditions outlined in the Aung San–Attlee Agreement of
January 1947 was the establishment of a commission that would in-
vestigate the sentiments of a broad spectrum of peoples in the
Frontier Areas concerning integration with Burma Proper,
which, it was hoped, could be achieved with “the free consent of the
inhabitants of those areas.” During March–April 1947, the eight-
man committee, chaired by Colonel D. R. Rhees-Williams, solicited
opinions from many different ethnic minority groups, including
those who had not participated in the February 1947 Panglong
Conference. They included the remote Wa, whose leaders report-
edly said they had no opinion on constitutional issues “because we
are a wild people.” Though a wide variety of opinions were ex-
pressed to FACE, there was general agreement among the minori-
ties that they should enjoy autonomy and equal rights with the peo-
ple of Burma Proper; but Karen (Kayin) leaders were bitterly
suspicious of Burman (Bamar) intentions and demanded special
concessions. The FACE Report, presented to the British and Burma
governments in June 1947, included recommendations on state au-
tonomy, representation of the Frontier Areas in the Constituent As-
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GALON • 195

sembly, and which territories should be recognized as part of the

states, which part of “Ministerial Burma.” See also CONSTITU-
TION OF 1947.

FURNIVALL, JOHN S. (1878–1960). British official and scholar who

served in Burma as a member of the Indian Civil Service from 1902
to 1923 and founded the Burma Research Society in 1909 and the
Burma Book Club in 1928. He is best known for describing the so-
cial and economic impact of colonial rule in terms of the plural so-
ciety, a critique of laissez faire capitalism in a multiethnic society
that after World War II was widely accepted as the definitive analy-
sis of the Western imperial legacy in Southeast Asia and other parts
of the Third World. He argued that although foreign rule and eco-
nomic development had made Burma prosperous, this prosperity
benefited foreign rather than indigenous communities: “[U]nder
Burmese rule the Burman was a poor man in a poor country; now
[1948] he is a poor man in a comparatively rich country.”
His books include An Introduction to the Political Economy of
Burma (1931), which was long used as a textbook at the University
of Rangoon (Yangon); The Fashioning of Leviathan: The Beginnings
of British Rule in Burma (1939); and Colonial Policy and Practice: A
Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (1948), in which
he most fully elaborated the plural society concept. From 1935 to
1941, he was a lecturer at Cambridge University, and also served as
advisor to Prime Minister U Nu from 1948 to 1960.

–G–

GALON. Also known as the Garuda, a bird from Indian mythology,

the mount of the Hindu god Vishnu, which is found in numerous mo-
tifs throughout Southeast Asia (e.g., an eagle-like garuda is the na-
tional symbol of the Republic of Indonesia). It is depicted as im-
mensely powerful, often shown trampling on nagas or snakes, its
mortal enemy. Galon symbolism was adopted by participants in the
Saya San Rebellion in 1930–1931, and the Galon Tat was the para-
military wing of the Myochit or Patriot Party of U Saw before World
War II. See also HONGSA; PEACOCK.
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196 • GANDHI HALL DECLARATION

GANDHI HALL DECLARATION. On July 27–28, 1990, the Central

Executive Committee of the National League for Democracy con-
vened a meeting of representatives elected in the General Election
of May 27, 1990, at Gandhi Hall in downtown Rangoon (Yangon)
and issued a declaration calling on the State Law and Order
Restoration Council to allow the new members of parliament to
form a government; release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, U Tin U, and
other political prisoners from detention; and suspend laws and de-
crees that restricted civil liberties.

GEMSTONES. Burma is renowned for its gemstones, especially “pi-

geon blood rubies,” which for centuries have been mined at Mogok
(Mogoke) in what is now Mandalay Division. Before the British
colonial period, the mining of rubies at Mogok, Sagyin (near Man-
dalay), and Nanyarzeik (in Kachin State) was a royal monopoly.
Sapphires are also found in these places. Hpakant in Kachin State
produces the world’s finest jadeite, highly valued in China, and pearls
are found in the Mergui Archipelago. Amber, of a fine variety
known as “Burmite,” has been mined in the Hukawng Valley of
Kachin State.
Under both the Ne Win regime and the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC)/State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC), gemstones have remained a government monop-
oly, controlled by the Myanmar Gems Enterprise, which holds annual
emporia for international buyers each year in March, an important
source of foreign exchange. Like Burma’s old kings, the post-1988
military regime believes that the possession of extraordinary gem-
stones is an auspicious sign, an indicator of legitimacy. In 1990, the
SLORC announced that it had successfully recovered a huge, 496-
carat ruby that had been mined at Mogok; then taken by black mar-
ket entrepreneurs across the border to Bangkok but recaptured by
Military Intelligence agents. The stone was dubbed the “Nawata
(SLORC) Ruby” in the state-controlled media. In 1991 a special
postage stamp was issued to commemorate it. See also MINERAL
RESOURCES.

GENERAL COUNCIL OF BURMESE ASSOCIATIONS (GCBA).

Growing out of the General Council of Buddhist Associations, the
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GENERAL COUNCIL OF SANGHA SAMMEGGI • 197

peak organization of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association

(YMBA), the GCBA substituted “Burmese” for “Buddhist” in its
English name at its March 1920 national conference in order to have
a wider popular appeal. It was the major vehicle of Burmese nation-
alism before the Saya San (Hsaya San) Rebellion of 1930–1932
and, unlike the YMBA, was a political rather than a cultural-religious
organization. Adopting the methods of the Indian National Congress,
it led a boycott of the election of Burmese members to the Indian leg-
islature in 1920 and also opposed the government act that established
Rangoon (Yangon) University as a degree-granting institution. It
had a network of 12,000 local branches in Lower and Upper Burma;
worked closely with “political pongyis,” including U Ottama; and
played a major role in the national schools movement after the uni-
versity boycott. During the 1920s, however, it was weakened by fac-
tionalism and power politics. It split in 1922 over the issue of whether
to support or oppose dyarchy reforms, with the “Twenty-One Party”
(21 members of the GCBA) participating in the 1923 dyarchy elec-
tions, while the “Hlaing-Pu-Gyaw GCBA” boycotted them. In 1924,
a further split occurred over the issue of noncooperation in tax pay-
ment. The following year, the U Soe Thein faction, also known as the
“Pongyis’ GCBA,” broke away from the mainstream GCBA, propos-
ing a harder line, on against cooperation with the British. By the late
1920s, the GCBA had been largely discredited. In the years before
World War II, many of its original leaders collaborated closely with
the colonial state. See also DOBAMA ASIAYONE; GENERAL
COUNCIL OF SANGHA SAMMEGGI (GCSS).

GENERAL COUNCIL OF SANGHA SAMMEGGI (GCSS). Estab-

lished by “political pongyis” as a national organization in 1920 in op-
position to British colonial rule (sammeggi means “united” or
“unity”). Working closely with the General Council of Burmese As-
sociations (GCBA), its protests against the authorities were highly
effective because Buddhist monasteries (kyaung) were found in
every Burmese village; activist monks (dhammakatika) preaching on
political themes had growing influence during a time of hardship in
rural Burma (despite the disapproval of many senior sayadaws, who
believed monks should avoid politics); and young monks, having re-
nounced family ties, made ideal “shock troops” for demonstrations.
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198 • GENERAL ELECTION OF MAY 27, 1990

The monks established thousands of wunthanu athin in rural vil-

lages. However, government crackdowns and the GCSS’s own fac-
tionalism, which paralleled that of the GCBA, had undermined its
credibility by the 1930s. See also OTTAMA, U; WISARA, U.

GENERAL ELECTION OF MAY 27, 1990. On September 10, 1988,

the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) held its second Ex-
traordinary Congress, at which it promised to hold a multiparty
general election. After the State Law and Order Restoration Coun-
cil (SLORC) was established on September 18, the new military
junta included the holding of a general election as one of its “four
tasks,” indicating that it would transfer power to a duly elected gov-
ernment once social stability had been reestablished and the election
properly carried out. Election management became the responsibility
of a body redundantly named the “Elections Commission for Hold-
ing Democratic Multi-Party General Elections,” given legal status on
September 21. A Political Party Registration Law decreed by the
SLORC a week later created the framework within which parties run-
ning in the election could be organized. Having lost its status as the
only legal political party, the BSPP reorganized itself as the National
Unity Party (NUP). The National League for Democracy (NLD)
soon emerged as the most popular new party. Altogether, more than
230 parties were established, mostly small organizations with only a
handful of members. Most of these were “deregistered” by the Com-
mission, and only 93 parties actually contested the election.
In February 1989, the SLORC announced that the election would
be held within 14 months of the issuance of a Pyithu Hluttaw Elec-
tion Law, which was decreed on May 31, 1989. Single-member elec-
tion constituencies were described as being the same as those of the
Pyithu Hluttaw, or BSPP-era People’s Assembly. In November
1989, the exact date of the election, May 27, 1990, was announced in
the state media.
Observers doubted that the election would be fair, given the Na-
tional Unity Party’s superior resources (as the former BSPP) and the
SLORC’s initial refusal to allow outside monitoring in any form.
Moreover, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, was
barred from running for a seat in a Rangoon (Yangon) constituency.
The choice of the date, the 27th of the month, seemed to reflect re-
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GERMANY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF, RELATIONS WITH • 199

tired leader Ne Win’s preoccupation with his lucky number, nine (2

⫹ 7 ⫽ 9).
The election went smoothly, however, observed by representatives of
the different parties, diplomats, and foreign journalists. The results—a
substantial victory for the NLD, which won 59.9 percent of the pop-
ular vote and 392 (81 percent) of the 485 contested seats—indicate
that the SLORC had made little or no effort to interfere with the
process. The Election Commission publicly reported results for 485
constituencies in full detail (due to local conditions, seven con-
stituencies out of a total of 492 did not choose representatives). Other
winning parties were the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy
(23 seats), the Arakan (Rakhine) League for Democracy (11 seats),
the NUP (10 seats), and the Mon National Democratic Front (5 seats).
The participation rate, 72.6 percent, was the highest in Burma’s short
history of elections (two million votes were declared invalid and not
included in the official results).
The SLORC apparently held the election in the belief that either
the National Unity Party would win a majority or that a number of
small, weak parties would form a coalition that the regime could eas-
ily manipulate. That the result was quite different, even though NLD
leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin U were under house arrest, sug-
gests that Military Intelligence had underestimated the depth of pop-
ular dissatisfaction. Constituencies with large military populations,
such as Mingaladon Township in northern Rangoon, returned NLD
candidates, showing wide support for the opposition party among the
armed forces rank and file.
However, on July 27, 1990, the military regime issued SLORC
Announcement 1/90, declaring that a civilian government could not
be established until a new constitution was drafted. In the July 28,
1990, Gandhi Hall Declaration, the NLD called for a speedy trans-
fer of power.

GERMANY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF, RELATIONS WITH. Im-

perial, Weimar, and Nazi Germany had few significant contacts with
Burma other than commercial ties, but after the country became in-
dependent in 1948, West Germany played an important, though still
little understood, role involving General Ne Win. In 1955, a company
owned by the West German state, Fritz Werner, was invited by the
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200 • GLASS PALACE CHRONICLES

Union of Burma government to assist in the establishment of an in-

digenous armaments industry, to provide the Tatmadaw with small
arms, ammunition, and explosives. A number of Tatmadaw personnel
were trained by the company in Germany, and between 1962 and
1988 Ne Win visited Germany every year as a personal guest of the
company, on what one German scholar calls “a mixture of private
holidays and business trips” (his last trip there was in May 1988).
Fritz Werner arranged for the construction of Union of Burma Five
Star Line ships in Bremen and Hamburg and established one of the
very few joint ventures in socialist Burma, Myanma Fritz Werner, for
the purpose of promoting industry.
Political relations between the two countries during this time were
also friendly, as reflected in an official visit by Germany’s President
Richard von Weizsächer to Burma in February 1986. Between 1970
and 1988, Germany was consistently the second-largest donor of for-
eign aid to the Ne Win government (after Japan), mostly in the form
of concessional loans, which during the economic crisis of the late
1980s left the country with a huge, unpayable debt in deutschmarks
(and yen). The flow of official development assistance funds from
Bonn to Rangoon (Yangon) increased significantly in the late 1970s,
reaching a high of US$75 million in 1983. German policy makers
thought Burma an appropriate destination for aid because it repre-
sented a “third way” in economic systems, between Western capital-
ism and Soviet-style communism. Aid was halted, however, after the
State Law and Order Restoration Council seized power in Sep-
tember 1988. See also EUROPEAN UNION, RELATIONS WITH.

GLASS PALACE CHRONICLES (HMANNAN YAZAWIN). Com-

piled in 1829 by order of King Bagyidaw (r. 1819–1838), a history of
Burma (or more precisely, the kingdoms established in the central
valley of the Irrawaddy [Ayeyarwady] River) from its legendary
origins to the Konbaung Dynasty. It was so named because the com-
mittee of “learned Brahmins, learned monks and learned ministers”
who were appointed to compose it worked in a pavilion decorated
with glass mosaic located within the palace compound at Ava
(Inwa). The Chronicles trace the origins of the Konbaung royal fam-
ily to the kingdom of Tagaung in Upper Burma, whose founder was
a prince of Sakya in northern India, the country where Gotama Bud-
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GOLF • 201

dha was born. Direct descent from the Maha Thamada, the first
king, was also claimed. The Glass Palace Chronicles were not in-
tended to present an objective view of history, but rather to glorify the
dynasty established by Alaungpaya (r. 1752–1760), who, however,
seems to have been of rather humble origin.

GOD’S ARMY. In the Sgaw Karen language, K’sa Do Yuah Thu’Mu

(“The Great Lord’s Army”), a small Karen (Kayin) armed group that
defected from the Karen National Union in 1996–1997 and was
headed by nine-year-old twin boys, Johnny and Luther Htoo. God’s
Army was an example of the kind of millenarian religion, featuring
Messiah-like saviors, which has frequently emerged among the
Karens. Johnny and Luther’s followers believed that they had super-
natural powers, including invulnerability to Tatmadaw bullets and
the command of “invisible armies” containing hundreds of thousands
of “angel warriors.” Like the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army,
God’s Army was an expression of Karen disillusionment with the
KNU’s mainline Christian leadership. It also reflected the chaotic
conditions along the Thai–Burma border after the fall of Maner-
plaw. The group was allegedly connected with a hostage-taking inci-
dent at a hospital in Ratchaburi, Thailand, in 2000, in which one
hostage and the 10 hostage takers were killed. The short history of
God’s Army came to an end in January 2001 when Johnny and Luther
surrendered to Thai authorities and were tearfully reunited with their
mother.

GOLF. Introduced to Burma during the British colonial period, the

game of golf is not only recreation but also an occasion for wealthy
and powerful members of society, especially high-ranking Tat-
madaw officers and their business partners, to develop profitable re-
lationships. Although Ne Win isolated the country from most foreign
influences, he loved golf and frequently traveled from his heavily
guarded compound on the shores of Inya Lake to one of the few op-
erating golf courses in Rangoon (Yangon). During the Burma So-
cialist Programme Party period (1962–1988), local state and party
officials sometimes sponsored the construction of golf courses in
their jurisdictions to give themselves a place where they could enter-
tain and influence higher officials. After the State Law and Order
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202 • GOVERNMENT OF BURMA ACT

Restoration Council opened the country to foreign economic influ-

ences in 1988, golf assumed even greater importance, as military of-
ficers and local businesspeople made joint venture deals with foreign
partners. Many golf courses are military owned. Lavish courses, such
as the Pun Hlaing Golf Estate in Rangoon’s Hlaing Thayar Township
or the Hanthawaddy Golf and Country Club near Pegu (Bago), have
been designed to meet international standards.

GOVERNMENT OF BURMA ACT (1935). A law in effect between

April 1, 1937, and the Japanese occupation that separated Burma
administratively and politically from India and placed it under the
executive authority of a governor directly responsible to London,
rather than to the Viceroy of India. Although the governor exercised
control over matters relating to defense, foreign affairs, finances,
and the “Excluded Areas,” which formed a major portion of the
Frontier Areas. In other matters, he was obliged to act in accor-
dance with the decisions of the cabinet, headed by a prime minister,
who was chosen by Parliament. The Parliament was bicameral, con-
sisting of a 36-seat Senate and a 132-member House of Represen-
tatives. Dr. Ba Maw became the first prime minister under the new
system after a general election was held in 1936; his leadership was
constrained, however, not only by the governor’s reserved powers
but also by business and communal interests in the legislature.
Many Burmese political leaders opposed the 1935 act; by separat-
ing Burma from India, it seemed to deprive the country of the con-
stitutional advances being accomplished on the Subcontinent. See
also DYARCHY.

GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, FIFTH (1871). A meeting of mem-

bers of the Sangha, sponsored by King Mindon (r. 1853–1878), at
Mandalay to produce an authoritative version of the Tipitaka, or
Buddhist scriptures. In connection with this event, the king also do-
nated a hti to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon). The
Council recited and corrected the scriptures, which were carved on
stone stelae and housed on the grounds of the Kuthodaw Pagoda.
See also GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, SIXTH; NU, U.

GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, SIXTH. Following the precedent

set by King Mindon (r. 1853–1878), Prime Minister U Nu convened
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HANTHAWADDY • 203

the Sixth Great Buddhist Council in May 1954 to produce an author-

itative Burmese language translation of the scriptures, or Tipitaka,
from the Pali original. Held at the Maha Pasana Guha, an artificial
cave built on the grounds of the Kaba Aye (World Peace) Pagoda in
Rangoon (Yangon), it brought together learned members of the
Sangha and completed its task by 1956. The Council, which is also
known as the Sixth Buddhist Synod, coincided with the 2,500th an-
niversary of the attainment of nibbana by Gotama Buddha. See also
GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, FIFTH.

GREATER MEKONG SUBREGION (GMS). A scheme promoted

by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to develop infrastructure, in-
cluding roads, waterways, and electric power generation, to achieve
the economic integration of countries connected by the Mekong
River. Six countries fall within the GMS: Burma, Cambodia, China
(Yunnan Province), Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. One of the
planned initiatives of the GMS is the “East-West Economic Corri-
dor,” which would be an overland route connecting the Andaman and
the South China Seas, running from Burma by way of Thailand and
Laos to Vietnam. Through the GMS regional context, the Asian De-
velopment Bank has been giving modest amounts of official devel-
opment assistance to Burma, despite the fact that some countries on
the ADB’s governing board have imposed formal or informal sanc-
tions on the State Peace and Development Council. See also AID,
FOREIGN.

–H–

HAKA (HAKHA). The capital of Chin State, with a population esti-

mated at 15,496 in 1996. Located in the central part of the state, it
was the homeland of the Haka or Lai tribe of the Chins, served as a
center of administration for the southern Chin Hills during the British
colonial period, and was where American Baptist missionaries es-
tablished their headquarters in 1899. The former capital of Chin State
was Falam, located to the north.

HANTHAWADDY (HONGSAWADDY). The most important city-

state established by the Mons, ca. 825 CE, and now known as Pegu
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204 • HAW

(Bago), on the river of the same name. According to legend, Gotama

Buddha on his travels in the area saw two Brahminy ducks (hongsa in
the Mon Language) perched on a rock, the male supporting the female,
and prophesized that this would be the site of a great nation. The
Hinthagone Pagoda marks the spot. Hanthawaddy’s golden age was in
the 15th century, when it was the capital of a powerful Mon state, and
again in the 16th century, when the Burman (Bamar) rulers Tabinsh-
wehti and Bayinnaung made it the capital of a unified Burma. Accord-
ing to 16th-century European witnesses, it was one of the richest ports
in Southeast Asia, a rival of Malacca and Ayuthaya. But Alaungpaya
sacked the city in 1757, and it declined in importance, not only because
of the war and the depopulation of Lower Burma but also the progres-
sive silting of the Pegu River. See also BINNYA DALA; DHAM-
MAZEDI; KYAIK; RAZADARIT; SHINSAWBU; SHWEMAWDAW
PAGODA; SMIM DAW BUDDHAKETI.

HAW. The residence of a sawbwa (sao-pha), a traditional Shan (Tai)

ruler. In the smaller of the Shan States, these were often rather sim-
ple wooden structures, but others were quite elaborate, made of teak
and modeled on the Mandalay Palace, with a central spire or pyat-
that elevated above the central throne room. During the British colo-
nial period, some of the wealthier sawbwas, such as the rulers of
Keng Tung, Hsipaw, and Yawnghwe, built palaces that combined
traditional, Western, and Indian designs. To the distress of the Shan
people, the Keng Tung haw was demolished in 1991 by the State
Law and Order Restoration Council to make may for a tourist ho-
tel. Other haw, like the one in Yawnghwe, remain in a state of neg-
lect. See also ARCHITECTURE, TRADITIONAL.

HEALTH. Burma, like neighboring Asian countries, has a sophisti-

cated tradition of indigenous medicine, and many long-established
customs, such as frequent bathing and a diet rich in fruits and veg-
etables, are healthful. But the history of modern public health ser-
vices began during the British colonial period. After independence,
the governments of U Nu and Ne Win invested significant resources
in health facilities in accordance with the socialist principle that they
should be available to all. From 1962 to 1988, when the Burma So-
cialist Programme Party (BSPP) was in power, the number of
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HEALTH • 205

trained physicians, nurses, and midwives increased 300 to 500 per-

cent, and the number of hospitals almost doubled. Medical care was
free in principle, although of a rather low standard.
Since the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
seized power in September 1988, both the quality and availability of
health care for the great majority of Burmese people has declined
dramatically. This is because smaller percentages of government
budgets are allocated to health compared to the BSPP years (while
military-related spending has grown dramatically), and because the
old system of public hospitals and clinics has been allowed to deteri-
orate. Since 1988, people with money have patronized expensive, pri-
vate sector hospitals, and Tatmadaw personnel have their own rela-
tively well-equipped system of hospitals and clinics.
Three other factors have also had a negative impact on health stan-
dards: the growing expense of food, including rice, which has led to
widespread malnutrition among poor people, especially children; the
Tatmadaw’s stepped-up pacification of ethnic minority areas, where
people are often subjected to forced relocation and forced labor;
and growth in the sex industry and the use of heroin, which have
created an epidemic of AIDS. According to a 2000 report by the
World Health Organization (WHO), Burma ranked 139 out of 191
countries listed in terms of the population’s overall health. Life ex-
pectancy at birth for both sexes, 55.8 years, is low by regional stan-
dards (Thailand’s is 71.2 years), while rates of infant, child, and
childbirth death are high. There are grave shortages of physicians,
nurses, and equipment at most hospitals, and patients often have to
buy their own medicines on the black market.
At present, malaria surpasses even AIDS as a serious public health
threat, not only because of inadequate facilities, but because treatment-
resistant strains of the mosquito-borne parasite have emerged, espe-
cially in the mountainous region along the Thai–Burma border.
Refugees and forcibly relocated persons in the border areas, includ-
ing many Karens (Kayins), Karennis, and Shans, are especially
vulnerable. In Burma, most cases of malaria (according to one source,
85 percent) are of the potentially lethal P. falciparum variety. Tuber-
culosis is also widespread, according to WHO statistics reported in
2002, causing 85,000 new cases and 20,000 deaths a year. Other
widespread diseases include dengue fever, dysentery, and hepatitis.
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206 • HEARN KHAM, SAO NANG

Since 1991, a number of international nongovernmental organi-

zations have worked in Burma’s health sector, though under restric-
tive conditions imposed by the military regime. Because of the coun-
try’s many health emergencies, the issue of humanitarian aid has
become controversial. Some groups, such as the National Coalition
Government of the Union of Burma and ALTSEAN-Burma, argue
that humanitarian aid should not be given unless it is in consultation
with the National League for Democracy and without State Peace
and Development Council (SPDC) involvement; aid given in bor-
der areas should be strictly monitored by independent observers.
Critics of this position, such as the International Crisis Group, say
that the health crisis is too serious for aid to be subject to “political”
conditions, and that it should be given even through SPDC-controlled
channels. See also EDUCATION; POPULATION.

HEARN KHAM, SAO NANG (1915–2003). Mahadevi (chief queen)

of the Shan State of Yawnghwe, prominent member of parliament,
and leader of a Shan (Tai) insurgent movement during the 1960s.
The daughter of the formidable Khunsang Ton-Huung of Hsenwi, she
married Sao Shwe Taik, Sawbwa of Yawnghwe, in 1937 and was
Burma’s first lady when her husband served as president of the Union
from 1948 to 1952. As a member of parliament during the mid-1950s,
she strongly advocated Shan interests. She was overseas when Ne
Win seized power and closed down parliamentary government on
March 2, 1962, and imprisoned her husband. She returned to Burma
following his death in November 1962, and the following year es-
caped with her five children to Thailand, where she became chair-
person of the War Council of the original Shan State Army. She held
that post until 1969, when she emigrated to Canada.

HEROIN. A narcotic derived and refined from the latex of the opium
poppy (Papaver somniferum). Its various grades, usually injected into
the bloodstream with a needle, are much stronger and more addictive
than opium, which is usually smoked. Not only are large amounts of
heroin refined in laboratories inside Burma and exported to foreign
countries, but heroin addiction has also become a serious domestic
problem. Although some heroin abuse was recorded in Burma’s
larger cities during the Ne Win era (1962–1988), it expanded rapidly
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HONGSA • 207

after the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)

seized power in 1988 because of greater availability, the result in
large measure of cease-fires negotiated between the SLORC and
drug-dealing armed groups, especially the United Wa State Army.
While rumors that Military Intelligence encouraged heroin use
among college students in order to demoralize them are unsubstanti-
ated, addiction rates have been high among unemployed youth and
students left idle by the closure of universities during the 1990s. Ad-
diction is also widespread among miners, especially at the Hpakant
mine in Kachin State, where jadeite is extracted. The United Nations
Drug Control Program estimates that there are a half million opium,
heroin, and synthetic drug addicts in Burma. Because the needles
used to inject heroin are reused, often many times, under very unsan-
itary conditions, heroin addiction has been the major factor in the
rapid spread of AIDS. See also AMPHETAMINES.

HKAKABO RAZI. Burma’s highest mountain, at 5,887 meters

(19,309 feet); also the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. An exten-
sion of the eastern Himalaya range, it is located near the northern tip
of Kachin State, overlooking the borders with China and India.
Other high peaks in this region are Gamlang Razi, at 5,837 meters
(19,144 feet); Dindaw Razi, at 5,466 meters (17,927 feet); and
Sheankala Razi, at 5,000 meters (16,399 feet). Hkakabo Razi was
known as the “Putao Knot” during the British colonial period, but it
was little explored (James G. Scott does not mention it in his 1906
Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information). It was not climbed
until September 1996, by a Burmese–Japanese team. All the higher
mountains in this region are snow covered all year-round.

HLUTTAW. The Council of State in precolonial Burma, a major gov-

ernmental institution during the later Toungoo and Konbaung Dy-
nasties. It consisted of four wungyi (“great burden bearers”), senior
ministers of state who together were responsible for the kingdom’s
administration and also tried important legal cases. See also AD-
MINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLONIAL BURMA.

HONGSA. The Mon Language name of the Brahminy Duck or

Golden Sheldrake, known as hamsa in Pali and hintha in the
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208 • HPAKANT

Burmese Language. Much as the peacock is the symbol of the

Burmans, the Brahminy Duck is the symbol of the Mons, associ-
ated with the legendary founding of the city of Hanthawaddy
(modern-day Pegu [Bago]). The bird is esteemed for having only
one mate during its lifetime. In Lower Burma, where many pago-
das such as the Shwe Dagon were built by the Mons, the hongsa
is a common motif, often depicted atop “prayer posts.”

HPAKANT. The world’s major source of the high-quality jadeite, the

blue-green stone that has been esteemed in China for millennia. The
open-pit mines at Hpakant, located west of the state capital of My-
itkyina in Kachin State, produce a grade of jadeite considered su-
perior in quality even to stones found in China itself. Few foreigners
have seen the mine; gemstones are a state monopoly, and access is
tightly controlled by the Tatmadaw. As many as half a million des-
perately poor miners work there under harsh conditions, drawn by the
hope of making their fortune. Described by one journalist as
“Burma’s black heart,” Hpakant’s mostly male population suffers
high rates of heroin addiction and AIDS.

HPOUN. Sometimes hpon or pon, an important concept in Burmese so-

cial and political life that is frequently translated as “glory” but more
accurately means the possession of powerbecause of the accumula-
tion of merit (kutho) in past lives. Although a person with hpoun may
act in violent or immoral ways, this is not seen as delegitimizing his
power, since it has already been “earned” in previous existences.
Thus, power, or the holding of it, is equivalent to authority. This con-
cept supports a conservative, hierarchical society in which opposition
to abuses of power rarely occurs. Ne Win’s success in holding onto
power from 1962 to 1988 despite economic stagnation, ethnic mi-
nority insurgency, and his regime’s violations of human rights, was
sometimes explained in terms of his possession of abundant hpoun.
Males are said to possess special hpoun, which may be damaged if
they find themselves in a subordinate position to a woman. In part,
this explains the antipathy of the State Peace and Development
Council to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Victory in battle, no matter how cruelly the defeated are treated,
capture of sacred objects, such as the Maha Muni Image, or posses-
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HSINBYUSHIN, KING • 209

sion of sacred white elephants were traditionally viewed as signs of

hpoun in rulers. Defeat, assassination, or some other calamity was a
sign that the ruler’s store of merit had been exhausted. Many ob-
servers see the hierarchy and inequality inherent in the concept of
hpoun as a major obstacle to the development of democratic values
in contemporary Burma. However, true members of the Sangha pos-
sess abundant hpoun (thus, they are known as hpoungyi or pongyi,
“great glory”) and dedicate themselves to a blameless spiritual life.
Moreover, the ideal ruler, as defined by the Buddhist Ten Duties of
the King, was expected to rule justly and compassionately, like the
Indian Emperor Asoka (268–233 BCE).

HSENWI. One of the major Shan States, bordered on the north by

China’s Yunnan Province, on the east by Kokang, and on the south
and west by the Shan states of Hsipaw, Mongmit, and South Hsenwi.
In the 1950s, it covered an area of 16,685 square kilometers (6,442
square miles) and had a population of 240,000, including Shans
(Tai), Kachins, and other ethnic minority groups. The major town is
Lashio, the railhead for the Burma Road during World War II. In
the late 1880s, the British recognized Khunsang Ton-huung as
(North) Hsenwi’s sawbwa, while giving South Hsenwi to his rival
Sao Mong, son of the old sawbwa of Hsenwi, who had attempted to
overthrow Ton-huung with the aid of the Burmese.

HSINBYUSHIN, KING (r. 1763–1776). Third king of the Konbaung

Dynasty and son of its founder, Alaungpaya. His reign was marked
by military aggression and many victories, including capturing and
pillaging the Siamese capital of Ayuthaya in March 1767. Its complete
destruction (the ruins of its temples and palaces can still be seen to-
day) inspired a Siamese chronicler to write that, “the King of Han-
thawaddy [Bayinnaung] waged war like a monarch; the King of Ava
[Hsinbyushin] like a robber.” Prior to this conquest, he had subjugated
Chiang Mai and Vientiane (Laos). But his expansion into the Shan
States aroused China, which launched four unsuccessful punitive
campaigns against him between 1766 and 1769, including one led by
a son-in-law of the Chinese emperor that got within 48 kilometers (30
miles) of Ava (Inwa) before being routed. Hsinbyushin’s commander,
General Maha Thiha Thura, signed a treaty with the Chinese in 1770
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210 • HSIPAW

at Kaungton that stabilized relations but angered the king, who wanted
the Chinese force exterminated. He invaded the small state of Ma-
nipur in northeastern India, placing his nominee on the throne, but
the war in Siam (Thailand) was going badly, and the Mons staged up-
risings in Lower Burma. Siam, which grew powerful under the
Chakri Dynasty established in 1782, was never again conquered by
the Burmese. See also KENG TUNG.

HSIPAW (THIBAW). One of the most important of the old Shan

States, located in the northern part of modern Shan State, near
Lashio. It comprised 11,891 square kilometers (4,591 square miles),
and because of its geographic proximity to Upper Burma was
deeply influenced by Burmese culture. Its sawbwas were tributaries
of the Toungoo and Konbaung Dynasties. Well endowed with natu-
ral resources, it was one of the few Shan States to be opened to rail
transportation during the colonial period, including the Goktheik
Viaduct, which, when it was built over 100 years ago by American
engineers, was the world’s second-highest railway bridge. An impor-
tant aspect of local commerce was the trade in tea, grown by upland
Palaungs. The Bawgyo Pagoda, located near Hsipaw town, is one of
the most important Buddhist sites in Shan State. The last sawbwa of
Hsipaw, the Western-educated Sao Kya Hseng, was an outspoken
critic of Tatmadaw abuses in his state, and he disappeared after Ne
Win closed down parliamentary government in March 1962. Inge
Sargent, an Austrian national who was the Hsipaw Mahadevi (the
sawbwa’s chief queen), wrote about her experiences in Hsipaw in
Twilight over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess.

HTI. “Umbrella” in Burmese, referring to parasols and rain umbrellas.

The town of Bassein (Pathein) is famous for umbrellas, including
waterproofed saffron-colored ones used by Buddhist monks. In pre-
colonial Burma, umbrellas were also a sign of status, the nine-tiered
white umbrella being used exclusively by the king, while other col-
ors and sizes were reserved for high ministers, lower-ranking offi-
cials, and commoners according to a precise set of sumptuary laws.
Hti also refers to the finial that adorns pagodas, which resembles the
royal umbrella and—in the case of the more famous pagodas, such as
the Shwe Dagon—is richly adorned with gold, jewels, small Buddha
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA • 211

images, and thousands of small bells that make an agreeable sound

when the wind blows. Burmese monarchs frequently donated hti to
prominent pagodas; the hti were installed with great ceremony and
celebration when a pagoda was newly built or renovated. See also
SHWE DAGON PAGODA, ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT;
SHWE DAGON PAGODA, POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF.

HUKAWNG VALLEY. A lowland area, comprising approximately

20,720 square kilometers (8,000 square miles), located in northern
Kachin State. The name derives from ju-kawng, meaning “crema-
tion grounds” in the Jinghpaw Kachin language, referring to the
place where the bodies of Shans slain by Kachins were burned. Dur-
ing World War II, it earned the epithet “Valley of Death” because
many people perished there while trying to reach India to escape the
invading Japanese. Since the 1960s, it has been under the control of
the Kachin Independence Army/Organization, though decreas-
ingly so since the KIA signed a cease-fire with the State Law and
Order Restoration Council in 1994. The Hukawng Valley has de-
posits of amber and gold, which are being extensively worked by
prospectors, and large forests, which are being rapidly depleted. Re-
cently, the Forest Department of the central government established
a wildlife sanctuary in the valley that covers its entire extent and
makes the Hukawng Valley the world’s largest tiger reserve.

HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA. Although violations of basic human

rights were widespread during the Ne Win era (1962–1988), espe-
cially in ethnic minority areas, such as Karen (Kayin) and Shan
States, human rights in Burma did not become an issue of major in-
ternational concern until 1988, when the State Law and Order
Restoration Council seized power and suppressed the popular
movements of Democracy Summer with great brutality. Monitoring
by the UN High Commission for Human Rights, government agen-
cies, such as the U.S. Department of State, international nongovern-
mental organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch, and Burmese groups, such as the Shan Human Rights
Foundation and the Karen Human Rights Group, has revealed sys-
tematic abuse in practically every category of the 1949 Universal De-
claration of Human Rights. The State Peace and Development
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212 • HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA

Council (SPDC) has one of the poorest records on rights worldwide,

reflecting the absence of a consistent and fair rule of law and the
junta’s conviction that national unity can only be achieved through
force.
The SPDC uses an array of laws, such as the 1950 Emergency Pro-
visions Act, the Unlawful Associations Act, and the Law to Safeguard
the State from the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive
Acts, to detain and imprison nonviolent oppositionists, especially
members of the National League for Democracy (NLD). Once in
jail, political prisoners, who are estimated to number around 1,600,
are frequently subjected to torture and solitary confinement and re-
ceive little or no medical care. Many have died in prison. Often, those
who are detained for long periods of time are not even formally
charged or tried before a judge (most famously Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi, who had been put under house arrest three times as of 2005). Po-
litical prisoners sometimes have their sentences arbitrarily extended
while in jail. Outside of jail, dissidents are frequently bullied or at-
tacked by members of the progovernment Union Solidarity and De-
velopment Association, who were involved in the “Black Friday”
Incident of May 30, 2003. The SPDC has resorted to a wide variety
of obstructive tactics to prevent the NLD and other moderate groups
from engaging in ordinary political activities.
All publications are censored by the Press Scrutiny Board, and
comments critical of the government are harshly punished, for example,
the imprisonment of the comedian Zargana and the Moustache Broth-
ers for satirical remarks made at the junta’s expense. Information tech-
nology is carefully controlled, and Burma is one of the few Asian coun-
tries where access to the Internet is not widely available because of
government restrictions. Military Intelligence informers keep a close
watch on the population, especially university students, who were the
core of the Democracy Summer protests, a system that creates wide-
spread social distrust and alienation. The military has defrocked and im-
prisoned members of the Sangha who oppose them, contrary to Bud-
dhist principles, which state that monks can only be expelled from the
Order by their superiors. It has also ruled that members of the NLD and
other political parties cannot be ordained as monks.
Official discrimination against members of ethnic and religious
minorities has been a part of Burmese life since at least the Ne Win
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HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA • 213

era, including indigenous groups, such as the Karens (Kayins),

Karenni, Shans, Chins, and Kachins, as well as descendants of peo-
ple who came from the Indian Subcontinent during the British colo-
nial period, most of whom are Muslim, Christian, or Hindu. A Citi-
zenship Law passed in 1982 distinguishes among three unequal
classes of citizens, with only the first group (descendants of people
resident in Burma before the First Anglo-Burmese War) entitled to
full privileges. Each Burmese citizen is required to carry a national
identity card, which states his or her ethnicity and religion. Because
these cards are necessary to secure permission to travel, conduct
business, and perform other important tasks, ethnic and (especially)
religious minorities are vulnerable to unfair treatment by government
officials. The activities of non-Buddhist religious communities, espe-
cially Muslims of South Asian descent and ethnic minority Christians
in the border areas, are tightly restricted (e.g., Muslims cannot con-
struct new mosques, while old ones are sometimes demolished). In
1978 and again in late 1991, 200,000–300,000 Muslim Rohingyas,
residents of Arakan State, were forced to flee to Bangladesh be-
cause of Tatmadaw persecution.
Crimes against women by the military are widespread, especially
in ethnic minority areas, such as Shan State, and appear to be sys-
tematic, despite heated denials by the SPDC. In insurgent controlled
or contested areas, soldiers frequently subject village women to vio-
lent sexual abuse, and the arbitrary killing of men, women, and chil-
dren is not uncommon. Life has become so difficult for minority
communities that hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to
Thailand and other neighboring countries, where they struggle to
survive in refugee camps or as illegal aliens.
“Welfare rights” are largely ignored, as the government allocates at
least 45 percent of total spending to the military while neglecting ed-
ucation and health. The quality of hospitals, clinics, and schools has
declined since the end of Ne Win socialism in 1988. Between 1962
and 1988, a minimum, though not necessarily high, standard of public
education and health care were available to all. Now only those who
can pay have access to adequate schools or health care. The govern-
ment has not adopted a comprehensive strategy to combat the spread
of AIDS, and hospitalized patients often have to buy their own medi-
cine on the black market. Ninety-eight percent of schoolchildren drop
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214 • IMPHAL CAMPAIGN

out before finishing high school. Universities have been closed for
long periods since 1988; when open, they operate under heavy re-
strictions. Lack of rational economic planning on the part of the gov-
ernment keeps both rural and urban populations desperately poor in an
inflationary economy, spawning social problems such as the entry of
poor women into the domestic and international sex industry and a
flourishing drug economy.
Forced labor and forced relocation affect millions of Burmese,
including both Burmans and ethnic minorities. The use of child sol-
diers in the Tatmadaw is also widespread, and insurgents recruit them
as well.
The SPDC’s reaction to international criticism of its human rights
record has been to deny the allegations or argue that some practices,
such as forced labor (described as labor contributions), are a part of
Burma’s traditions. At times, the government has shown some re-
sponsiveness to outside criticism, such as negotiating with the Inter-
national Labour Organization over the issue of forced labor in
2000–2002, and allowing the International Committee of the Red
Cross to visit political prisoners since 1999. The government of Aus-
tralia has sent experts to train Burmese officials in human rights
awareness. Since 1988, there has been little evidence that such con-
cessions represent a significant change in junta attitudes about basic
human rights. See also INSEIN JAIL; MIN KO NAING; TAT-
MADAW AND BURMESE SOCIETY.

–I–

IMPHAL CAMPAIGN (MARCH–JUNE 1944). An offensive into

northeastern India (now Manipur and Nagaland States) carried out by
the Japanese Fifteenth Army under the command of Lieutenant-General
Mutaguchi Renya. Its purpose was to cut off India–China supply
routes, occupy the Imphal Plain, and inspire an uprising of Indian pa-
triots against British colonialism. For this purpose, the attacking
force included the Indian National Army, numbering 40,000, com-
manded by Subhas Chandra Bose. Intense fighting took place, espe-
cially around Imphal and Kohima, and conditions were made hellish
by the monsoon rains and mountainous topography. But the British
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INDIA AND BURMA • 215

lines, supplied by airdrops, held. The Fifteenth Army was forced to

retreat out of India and across the Chindwin (Chindwinn) River in
June–July. The failure of the campaign, which cost the Japanese as
many as 80,000 casualties, opened the way for Allied reoccupation of
Burma the following year. In the words of Christopher Bayly, “[T]he
Japanese army thrown against Imphal and Kohima was a kind of
mass suicide squad. When it was defeated by the vastly increased
firepower of the British and Indian armies and American air power, it
was cast aside and abandoned by its commanders” (Forgotten
Armies, 2004, 388). See also WORLD WAR II IN BURMA (MILI-
TARY OPERATIONS).

INDAWGYI LAKE. Located in western Kachin State; the largest lake

in Burma, with an area of 210 square kilometeres (81 square miles).
To the northeast the Indaw River flows out of it to join the Mogaung
River.

INDIA AND BURMA. The civilization of India has profoundly influ-

enced the development of the cultures and societies of Southeast
Asia, the region’s “Indianization” having begun more than two mil-
lennia ago. The Indian impact was especially strong in lowland areas,
where an agricultural economy based on rice emerged, and where
such powerful, organized states as Angkor in Cambodia; Ayuthaya in
Siam (Thailand); and Pagan (Bagan), Hanthawaddy, and Arakan
(Rakhine) in Burma were established. Although Theravada Bud-
dhism was the most important element in Indian civilization adopted
by early Burmese states, they also adopted classical Indian political
ideas, law, sciences, medicine, literature, writing systems, architec-
ture, and visual and performing arts, in order to enhance their
power and prestige. Although there are no indigenous Burmese Hin-
dus (as distinguished from Hindus of Indian ancestry), and Burma
did not adopt the Indian caste system, Hindu influences on Burmese
Buddhism have been significant. Many of Burma’s most important
nats are Hindu gods, such as Thagya Min, the divine protector of the
Buddhist religion, and Thurathadi (Saraswati), goddess of learning.
Pali, the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, is an Indian lan-
guage and has had a deep impact on the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-
guage.
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216 • INDIA, RELATIONS WITH

The Arakan (Rakhine) Yoma poses a formidable barrier to land

communication between central Burma and the Indian Subcontinent,
but seaborne trade and migration from South Asia helped bring Bud-
dhism and Indian civilization to Burmese shores. The Mons, who es-
tablished organized states in Lower Burma in the early centuries CE,
played an indispensable role in transmitting Indian civilization to the
Burmans. A key player in this process was the founder of the Pagan
(Bagan) Dynasty, King Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077), who brought
Mon monks, scholars, and artisans from Lower Burma to his capital
at Pagan.
In later centuries, kingdoms in Sri Lanka, sharing with Burma a
strong adherence to Theravada Buddhism, probably had a greater im-
pact on Burma than the Subcontinent. Following the Third Anglo-
Burmese War, however, Lower and Upper Burma became a
province of the British Indian empire, governed by the Viceroy in
Calcutta. The struggle for home rule and independence of the Indian
National Congress had a major influence on nationalist movements
in Burma, which was less modernized socially and politically than
India in the early twentieth century, but Mahatma Gandhi’s principle
of nonviolent struggle (satyagraha) was not popular with members of
the Dobama Asiayone, the most important prewar nationalist group.
See also INDIA, RELATIONS WITH.

INDIA, RELATIONS WITH. Independence leader Aung San and

Prime Minister U Nu were close to India’s prime minister, Jawahar-
lal Nehru, sharing the common experience of struggle against British
colonial rule. Nehru’s and U Nu’s governments also shared a com-
mitment to nonalignment in foreign policy and moderate socialism.
The Burma–India border was relatively unproblematic, and a joint
boundary commission was established only in 1967; by 1976, most
of the 1,600-kilometer-long, mountainous border had been demar-
cated.
When Ne Win seized power in March 1962, relations were
strained because the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP)
regime’s nationalization and demonetization policies appeared to
target Indian businesspeople. The latter petitioned the Indian govern-
ment for help, but New Delhi ascertained that because the BSPP poli-
cies affected all people resident in Burma and not just Indians, it
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INDIA, RELATIONS WITH • 217

could not interfere. Approximately 300,000 South Asians (including

both Indians and Pakistanis) were repatriated between 1963 and
1967; Burma offered them some compensation in the early 1970s. U
Nu’s residence in India from 1974 to 1980 caused additional tensions
because the former prime minister had led a Thailand-based antigov-
ernment insurgency.
Following Democracy Summer and the seizure of power by the
State Law and Order Restoration Council in September 1988, In-
dia was the only Asian country that was outspokenly supportive of
the prodemocracy movement. Along with the British Broadcasting
Corporation and the Voice of America, All India Radio (AIR) pro-
vided listeners in Burma with crucial information on the domestic po-
litical situation. When two Burmese students hijacked a Rangoon
(Yangon)-bound Thai airliner to Calcutta in late 1990, Indian offi-
cials treated them leniently, releasing them on bail.
By 1991–1992, however, New Delhi’s policy had begun to change,
as reflected in the halting of critical AIR broadcasts. Although the In-
dian government continued to give moral support to the prodemoc-
racy movement (Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the prestigious
Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1995),
trade ties with Burma were promoted, and high-level meetings of In-
dian and Burmese officials became more frequent, including a visit
by General Maung Aye, second most powerful figure in the State
Peace and Development Council, in November 2000. Three factors
account for India’s growing reliance on constructive engagement.
First, New Delhi feared that China was gaining too much influence
over the SLORC. Indian leaders were alarmed at the volume of Chi-
nese military aid to the Tatmadaw, including modernization of naval
bases fronting the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Bengal. Plans an-
nounced by Beijing in 1997 to construct a new transportation corri-
dor from Yunnan Province by way of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
River to Kyaukpyu in Arakan (Rakhine) State were another source
of concern, though these plans have yet to be put in action. From
New Delhi’s perspective, it seems that China has been using Burma
to challenge India’s mastery of the Indian Ocean.
Second, insurgents belonging to the National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (NSCN) had long used Burmese soil as a sanctuary in
their attacks on Indian security forces, while the Chin National
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218 • INDIANS IN BURMA

Front, which has not signed a cease-fire with the SPDC, has bases
in India’s Mizoram State, where the local people are ethnically the
same as the Chins. Agreements between the Indian and Burmese mil-
itaries have enabled them to carry out joint operations against these
groups and to more effectively halt the flow of Burmese drugs across
the Indian border. To develop the border area, India has given aid to
construct infrastructure, such as an Indo-Myanmar Friendship Road
connecting Chin State with Moreh in Mizoram.
Third, India now has substantial economic interests in Burma.
Two-way trade in 1997–1998 totaled US$264.7 million. Principal
Burmese exports to India are beans, pulses, and wood products, while
Burma imports manufactured goods, such as iron and steel, pharma-
ceuticals, and chemicals. Trade also flourishes at the border. In 2004,
it was announced that a natural gas field, the “Shwe [Gold] Prospect”
in the Bay of Bengal off Arakan State, which is being developed by
South Korean and Indian oil firms in cooperation with the Myanmar
Oil and Gas Enterprise, would start production in 2009, providing In-
dia with natural gas piped either through Arakan to Assam or by way
of Bangladesh to West Bengal. The Shwe Prospect will provide
much-needed energy for India’s rapid industrialization and earn the
SPDC between US$800 million and US$3 billion in profits each
year. India and Burma are both members of the BIMSTEC
(“Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thai Economic Coop-
eration) group. See also INDIA AND BURMA.

INDIANS IN BURMA. During the British colonial era, the Indian pop-
ulation of Burma (“Indian” in this context refers to South Asians, per-
sons from what are now India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) increased
rapidly because to British encouragement of immigration to provide
cheap labor for the modern colonial economy and Indians’ perception
that the country was a land of opportunity, where they could escape
the crushing poverty of home. Even after the Government of Burma
Act was implemented in 1937, separating Burma from India, there
were no effective curbs on Indian immigration until the eve of World
War II. According to the 1931 census, Indians numbered more than
one million, mostly in Lower Burma, and comprised 7 percent of the
country’s total population. Rangoon (Yangon) was primarily a South
Asian city: 54.9 percent of its people came from the Subcontinent,
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INDIANS IN BURMA • 219

outnumbering Chinese and Europeans, not to mention indigenous

Burmese (33.1 percent).
Known as kala to the Burmese, a word with negative connotations,
Burma’s Indian population reflected the diversity of the Subconti-
nent: among them were impoverished Tamil and Oriya laborers, who
worked on farms and factories, as coolies on the dockyards and
sweepers in the city streets; Bengalis, many of whom were lower-
level civil servants or professionals; Chittagongians, who came over
to Arakan (Rakhine) from what is now Bangladesh; Sikhs and
Gurkhas (the latter from Nepal), who served as soldiers or police-
men; and South Indian Chettiars, a wealthy money-lending class
who provided Burmese farmers with credit. Relations between
Burmese and Indians were generally hostile, not only because of the
latter’s large numbers and cultural and religious differences (most In-
dians were Hindu or Muslim), but also because poor Burmese com-
peted with Indians for jobs during the 1930s. The Chettiars were in-
tensely disliked, especially after bad economic conditions led to
foreclosures of family farms and they became major absentee
landowners. Burmese nationalists feared that the unrestricted flow of
Indian immigrants would result in the extinction of their race, and op-
posed marriages between Burmese women and Hindu or Muslim
men more vehemently than those with Chinese or Europeans. Bloody
anti-Indian riots broke out in Rangoon in 1930 and 1938.
When the Japanese invaded and occupied Burma in 1941–1942, as
many as 600,000 Indians escaped overland and by sea to British terri-
tory, apparently fearing massacres at the hands of the Burmese; of
these, 80,000 are estimated to have died, including those who at-
tempted to reach Bengal or Assam State by way of the Arakan
(Rakhine) Yoma or the mountain ranges separating Burma from
northeastern India. After Ne Win established the Revolutionary
Council, he enacted socialist policies that targeted businesspeople of
South Asian origin, forcing the repatriation of as many as 300,000 of
them to India and Pakistan between 1963 and 1967. By 1983, when
the last official census was held, the South Asian population was much
diminished: Indians, Chinese, and other persons of nonindigenous an-
cestry altogether comprised only 7.4 percent of Rangoon’s population.
Despite Burmese–Indian antagonisms, some Indians, such as U
Raschid, played an important role in the nationalist movement, and
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220 • INDONESIA, RELATIONS WITH

many nationalists were influenced by the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi

and the Indian National Congress. See also CHINESE IN BURMA;
INDIA, RELATIONS WITH; MUSLIMS IN BURMA; PLURAL
SOCIETY.

INDONESIA, RELATIONS WITH. Although there have been busi-

ness and investment connections between Indonesia and Burma since
the establishment of the latter’s postsocialist economy in 1988–1989,
arguably the most important impact of bilateral ties has been politi-
cal: the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace
and Development Council’s attempt to adopt a version of President
Soeharto’s doctrine of dwi fungsi (“two functions”), vesting the mil-
itary with a social/political development role, as well as a national de-
fense role. This is reflected in the principles adopted by the National
Convention, including granting the Tatmadaw a given number of
seats in the national legislature under a new constitution. Although
the fall of Soeharto in May 1998 meant the end of dwi fungsi in its
home country, the concept remains important in the SPDC’s plans for
a future political system. The government of post-Soeharto Indone-
sia, Southeast Asia’s largest country and a fellow member of the As-
sociation of Southeast Asian Nations, has occasionally criticized
the SPDC, especially over the issue of the house arrest of Aung San
Suu Kyi, but its basic policy remains noninterference in the domes-
tic affairs of fellow ASEAN members.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) IN BURMA. The seizure of

power by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
in September 1988 occurred on the eve of the “revolution” in infor-
mation technology that made the Internet and electronic mail avail-
able around the world. By the mid-1990s, “cyberactivism,” organized
by Burmese exiles and their supporters in North America, Europe,
and Asia, played an indispensable role in promoting cooperation
among widely disbursed Burmese democracy groups, as well as in-
forming the general public and policy makers about Burma issues.
Although in the early 1990s exile groups produced and distributed a
wide variety of hardcopy newsletters, such as Burma Issues, by the
end of the decade most of these groups were online.
In 1993, an American student based in Thailand started BurmaNet,
placing articles from the Bangkok Post and Nation on the Internet; these
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) IN BURMA • 221

two Thai newspapers provided the most reliable English-language in-

formation about Burma. BurmaNet grew rapidly and was joined by
The Irrawaddy, a hardcopy magazine also based in Thailand that be-
gan providing an extensive online edition. At the beginning of the
21st century, both of these online services and several others provide
information on a daily basis about the latest developments inside the
country, as reflected in their coverage of the “Black Friday” Inci-
dent of May 30, 2003. Cybercampaigns have also been organized by
the Free Burma Coalition and other groups to support the Massa-
chusetts Selective Purchasing Law and boycotts of companies, such
as Pepsi Cola, that have done business with the post-1988 military
regime. In the late 1990s, the State Peace and Development Coun-
cil began to sponsor its own website (“Myanmar.com”), which now
includes an online edition of the slick Myanmar Times and Business
Review.
Fearful that a flood of electronically delivered information could
cause unrest, the SLORC in September 1996 decreed the “Computer
Science Development Law,” which imposes heavy penalties (7 to 15
years’ imprisonment and fines) on persons who operate a computer
without obtaining a license from the Ministry of Communications,
Posts and Telegraphs. It prohibits the use of computers to “undermine
State Security,” and established a “Myanmar Computer Science De-
velopment Council,” chaired by SLORC Secretary-1 Lieutenant
General Khin Nyunt, to oversee the IT sector.
Although the law is concerned specifically with computers, harsh
punishments have been dealt out for the use of lower-tech informa-
tion devices as well. In 1996, the authorities arrested James Leander
Nichols, honorary consul for Norway and Denmark in Rangoon
(Yangon) and a close friend of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her fam-
ily, for illegal possession of two fax machines and a telephone
switchboard. Sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor, he
died at Insein Jail under mysterious circumstances.
Burma was one of the few Asian countries where e-mail and the
Internet were not widely available, but in 2001 the SPDC allowed
limited access. All Internet and e-mail transmissions pass through
government-controlled servers, which block sensitive sites. In 2002,
the regime, in cooperation with private computer firms, established
an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Park on what
had been the Hlaing Campus of Rangoon (Yangon) University, and
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222 • INLE LAKE

opened a second ICT park at the Yadanabon Market in Mandalay.

Like many authoritarian states, the SPDC would like to reap the eco-
nomic benefits of IT while avoiding the political risks. See also HU-
MAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

INLE LAKE. Located in western Shan State, home to the Intha peo-
ple and since British colonial days one of Burma’s major tourist at-
tractions. Inle Lake extends in a north-south direction, is approxi-
mately 17–18 kilometers long and 5–6 kilometers wide, and is at an
elevation of 875 meters above sea level. Its shores and islands are
densely populated, with about 150,000 people living there, and the
area is a major producer of rice, vegetables, and fruit. Many crops are
grown on “floating islands,” which are masses of soil tied together
with strands of water hyacinth. It is also a major center for silk weav-
ing, comparable to Amarapura. The major town is Yawnghwe
(Nyaungshwe), the capital of one of the old Shan States. Best
known to tourists for its “leg rowers,” fishermen who use one leg to
row their narrow wooden boats while dropping their conical nets over
the fish below, Inle Lake is also the location of the Phaung Daw U
Paya, an important Shan (Tai) Buddhist site.

INSEIN JAIL. Burma’s largest prison, located in Insein Township

in the northern part of Rangoon (Yangon), near the Hlaing River.
Built by the British in 1887, the extensive main prison is an octag-
onal structure with cell blocks radiating out from the center and
surrounded by two brick walls. Before World War II, the British
used it to confine leaders of the independence struggle, including
Thakin Than Tun. Political prisoners continued to be housed there
after the country became independent in 1948. Their numbers in-
creased significantly during the Ne Win era (1962–1988), espe-
cially following the labor strike and U Thant Incident of 1974. A
riot that broke out under mysterious circumstances in August 1988
led to the escape of many common criminals from the jail (and
from eight other prisons around the country). The escapees roamed
the city streets, sowing an atmosphere of fear and panic among or-
dinary citizens. This gave rise to suspicions that the breakouts had
been arranged by the government to create the atmosphere for a
military power seizure.
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INTERNAL UNITY ADVISORY BOARD • 223

At present, Insein Jail has about 9,000–10,000 prisoners in the main

and attached facilities. Of these, an estimated 1,600 are political prison-
ers. Although political prisoners received lenient treatment during the
British and U Nu periods, since 1962 they have been singled out for
harsh treatment, including torture, denial of adequate medical treatment,
and solitary confinement. They often endure violence at the hands of or-
dinary criminals, including gangsters who serve in powerful “trusty”
positions. Prominent oppositionists who have been confined there since
1988 include U Tin U, U Kyi Maung, and Min Ko Naing. Following
the “Black Friday” Incident of May 30, 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi
may have been confined there briefly. Other jails where political pris-
oners have been kept under severe conditions include those at Thayet
and Tharrawaddy. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

INSEIN TOWNSHIP. A township located in north Rangoon (Yangon),

its western border formed by the Hlaing River. An estimated 57 per-
cent of its population of 250,000 are Karen (Kayin), making this the
largest concentration of Karens inside Burma’s largest city and former
capital (the name Insein itself is believed to be of Karen rather than
Burmese origin). Because a majority of the resident Karens are Chris-
tian, the area is known for its many churches and “Seminary Hill,”
where three theological schools are located, including the Karen Bap-
tist Theological Seminary. (There were reports in 2005 that the semi-
naries were being relocated to a remote location.) Insein is also the site
of the notorious Insein Jail. In 1949, bitter fighting between Karen
National Union forces and central government troops occurred in the
township, and Rangoon (Yangon) Institute of Technology on Insein
Road was the site of the initial student activism in 1988. See also MIS-
SIONARIES, CHRISTIAN; TEA SHOP INCIDENT.

INTERNAL UNITY ADVISORY BOARD (IUAB). Established in

1968 by Ne Win to draw up plans for Burma’s future political sys-
tem; consisted of 33 veteran political and ethnic minority leaders,
who were ordered to submit their recommendations by May 31,
1969. The majority favored a return to the Constitution of 1947,
with amendments and retention of the semifederal system; a minor-
ity called for a “national unity congress” (presumably to draft a new
constitution) and establishment of a one-party socialist state. Former
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224 • INTHAS

prime minister U Nu submitted his own recommendations: Because

the March 1962 coup d’état that ended parliamentary government
was illegal, the old parliament should be reconvened, and U Nu as
prime minister would formally transfer power to Ne Win. U Nu also
called for restoration of democratic freedoms. His proposals were re-
jected, and he left the country, assuming leadership of a Thailand-
based antigovernment insurgency. See also PARLIAMENTARY DE-
MOCRACY PARTY.

INTHAS. An ethnic minority group who lives on or around Inle Lake,

in Yawnghwe (Nyaungshwe), one of the old Shan States. Their
name means “sons [children] of the lake.” Known for their industri-
ousness, they are skilled fishermen, weavers of silk, and farmers,
constructing “floating islands” of soil tied together with water hy-
acinth strands, which are used to grow crops on the lake’s surface.
According to a widely accepted account, the Inthas came from Tavoy
(Dawei) in what is now Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division, in the
14th century, their reputation for hard work recommending them to
the local sawbwa, who encouraged their migration from the south.
They speak a distinct dialect of the Burmese (Myanmar) language,
and are devout Buddhists.

INVESTMENT, FOREIGN. Although a state-owned West German

company, Fritz Werner, began operating inside Burma in the 1950s,
manufacturing small arms for the Tatmadaw, and Japanese oil com-
panies were involved in exploration in the Andaman Sea in the
1980s, there was no significant foreign private investment in the
country during the Burma Socialist Programme Party period
(1962–1988). In November 1988, the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council, following the precedents of China and Vietnam, de-
creed the “Union of Burma Foreign Investment Law,” which granted
foreign firms the right to establish branches, wholly owned sub-
sidiaries, and joint ventures with state-owned or private Burmese
firms. By 1998, more than US$6.8 billion in foreign investments had
been committed, although the amount actually disbursed was much
lower. The largest amounts were in the oil and natural gas, manu-
facturing, tourism, real estate, and mining sectors. However, by the
late 1990s, investment had slackened because of the 1997 Asian fi-
nancial crisis, Western sanctions, and political-economic uncertainty
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IRRAWADDY (AYEYARWADY) DIVISION • 225

inside the country. The major sources of investment capital in the late
1990s were, in descending order of magnitude: Singapore (US$1.49
billion), Britain (US$1.35 billion), Thailand (US$1.24 billion),
Malaysia (US$587 million), the United States (US$582 million),
France (US$470 million), the Netherlands (US$238 million), In-
donesia (US$236 million), and Japan (US$219 million). The largest
single investment was the US$1.2 billion Yadana Pipeline Project,
a French–American–Thai joint venture with the Myanmar Oil and
Gas Enterprise to supply Thailand with natural gas. Investment sta-
tistics for 2003–2004 reveal commitments by South Korea ($34.9
million), Britain ($27 million), Thailand ($22 million), Hong Kong
($3 million), China ($2.8 million), and Canada ($1.5 million). Statis-
tics on real Chinese investment since 1988 may be understated. See
also ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE LAW AND
ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE AND DE-
VELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.

INYA LAKE. Known during British colonial times as Victoria Lake,

Inya Lake is a large body of water located in the north-central part of
Rangoon (Yangon), bounded on the east by Kaba Aye Pagoda Road
and on the west by Pyay (Prome) Road. The Main Campus of Ran-
goon (Yangon) University lies to the lake’s southwest, and on the
shores of the lake are residences of prominent people, including Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi and—before the coup d’état attempt of March
2002—the family of Burma’s deceased ruler, Ne Win.

IRRAWADDY (AYEYARWADY) DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14

states and divisions, with an area of 35,139 square kilometres
(13,567 square miles) and an estimated population in 2000 of 6.8 mil-
lion (1983 census figure: 4,994,061). The divisional capital is Bas-
sein (Pathein), and the division is divided into five districts (Bas-
sein, Henzada [Hinthada], Ma-U-Bin, Myaungmya [Myoungmya],
and Pyapon) and 26 townships. It is bounded on the north by Pegu
(Bago) Division, on the northwest by Arakan (Rakhine) State, and
on the east by Rangoon (Yangon) Division. The coastal region is
formed by the delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River.
The mostly flat land is formed by alluvium from the Irrawaddy
River. Well watered and fertile, it is a major producer of rice; pulses,
beans, oil seeds, and groundnuts are also grown. Fresh and marine
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226 • IRRAWADDY (AYEYARWADY) RIVER

water fisheries, mangrove forests, and jute are economically impor-

tant. Irrawaddy Division is a major source of ngapi, a paste made
from fish or shrimp that is a staple of the Burmese diet.
Ethnically, Burmans (Bamars) form the majority of Irrawaddy
Division’s population, although there is also a large population of
Karens (Kayins), who are known as “Delta Karens,” and smaller
groups of Arakanese (Rakhines), Chins, and people of Indian and
Chinese ancestry. Ancestors of the Delta Karens migrated from their
native hills along the Thai–Burma border to what is now Irrawaddy
Division in the 19th century, after the British opened up the land for
rice cultivation. Although many Karens assimilated to Burmese cul-
ture, language, and religion, the Delta Karens, especially the Chris-
tians among them, played a leading role in developing Karen identity
and “nationhood” during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After
Burma became independent, Irrawaddy Division was a site of the
1949 Karen National Union insurgency.

IRRAWADDY (AYEYARWADY) RIVER. Burma’s largest river sys-

tem; bisects the country in a north-south direction, linking Upper and
Lower Burma. Its headwaters (the confluence of two smaller rivers)
rise just north of Myitkyina in Kachin State, and it is navigable year
round for a length of 1,448 kilometers (905 miles) between Bhamo
and the sea. Over the centuries, the Irrawaddy has been the single
most important geographic factor in central Burma’s political, cul-
tural, and economic integration: With the exception of Pegu (Bago),
all of Burma’s major historical capitals have been located on or near
it, including Mandalay, Pagan, Ava (Inwa), Amarapura, and
Sagaing. Rangoon (Yangon) is connected to it by the Twante Canal.
Even after the introduction of rail, air, and highway transport during
the British colonial period, it has been the country’s main commer-
cial artery. In the early 20th century, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Corpo-
ration operated the world’s largest fleet of riverboats and carried
nine million passengers a year. The first bridge to span the river was
the Ava Bridge, built by the British in 1934 but heavily damaged dur-
ing World War II; the Chinese built a second bridge near Prome
(Pyay) in 1998. With Chinese assistance, the river is being deepened
with dredges, making it part of a new transportation system reaching
from Yunnan Province to the Bay of Bengal (including a highway
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JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH • 227

connecting a port on the river with the coast of Arakan [Rakhine]

State). Just upriver from Pagan the Irrawaddy is joined by Chindwin
(Chindwinn) River; to the south, the Irrawaddy Delta, which emp-
ties into the Andaman Sea, is large and fertile, providing an ideal en-
vironment for the cultivation of paddy rice. See also MEKONG
RIVER; SALWEEN (THANLWIN) RIVER; SITTANG (SIT-
TOUNG) RIVER.

IRRAWADDY FLOTILLA COMPANY. Established in 1865 as a

public corporation. By the 1930s, the Scottish-owned Irrawaddy
Flotilla Company operated the world’s largest fleet of river boats, in-
cluding 270 steamboats and 380 barges and “flats” on the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) and other rivers in British Burma. Its “mail boats”
were over 300 feet (100 meters) long and could hold more passengers
than the R.M.S Titanic, most of these taking third class accommoda-
tion on the deck. Although the steamer captains were British, most of
the crew were Chittagongians, from what is now Bangladesh. For a
short period of time, the Irrawaddy Flotilla also operated a small air-
line that flew between Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, the oil fields
in what is now Magwe Division, Tavoy (Dawei), and Mergui
(Myeik). Enjoying privileged access to the colonial government, it
operated a virtual monopoly that put many Burmese river boat oper-
ators out of business. The glory days of the Flotilla ended with World
War II, when the British destroyed most of its boats and barges to
prevent their falling into the hands of the Japanese. See also AIR
TRANSPORT; WATER TRANSPORT.

–J–

JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH. Before World War II, Japan had rather
small-scale trade and cultural relations with Burma. On the eve of the
war, such prominent politicians as U Saw and Ba Maw cultivated
friendly ties with Japanese diplomats and undercover agents as a
means of gaining external support for the struggle against British colo-
nialism, and the Minami Kikan gave military training to the Thirty
Comrades led by Aung San in 1941; Colonel Suzuki Keiji estab-
lished the Burma Independence Army as Burma’s first postcolonial
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228 • JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH

armed force in December of that year. The Japanese occupation from

1942 to 1945 transformed the country. The land was devastated in
some of the largest land battles of the war; relations between the Bur-
mans and the ethnic minorities, especially the Karens, became hostile
because the latter remained largely loyal to the British; and the armed
forces became a permanent fixture in postwar Burmese politics. As for-
mer Prime Minister Khin Nyunt once said, “[O]ur Tatmadaw was
made in Japan.” The occupation also gave Aung San and other nation-
alists the opportunity to organize in both a political and military way to
successfully oppose reestablishment of a postwar British colonial
regime. In that sense, Japan contributed significantly to Burma’s inde-
pendence in 1948, although Japanese rule, including the depredations
of the Kempeitai (military police) and the death of as many as 50,000
Burmese laborers (romusha) on the Thai–Burma Railway, left many
bitter memories.
After 1954, when the Union of Burma and Japan signed a treaty
normalizing diplomatic relations, Japan’s influence in the country
was economic rather than military. Between that year and 1988, it
was the country’s largest donor of foreign aid, initially in the form of
war reparations, totaling US$390 million. By the mid-1980s, Tokyo
was disbursing hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in aid annually,
mostly in the form of concessional loans, for such projects as airport
modernization, industrialization, infrastructure, electric power gener-
ation, and hospital construction. Major Japanese general trading
companies (so–go– sho–sha), such as Mitsubishi Shoji and Mitsui Bus-
san, maintained offices in Rangoon (Yangon), not only to procure
goods for official development assistance contracts awarded by the
Japanese government, but also in the hope that the socialist economy
of this resource-rich country would be liberalized. But when the so-
cialist system was scrapped after the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council seized power in September 1988, bilateral relations en-
tered a new and uncertain period.
The Japanese government froze its aid allocations for political, hu-
man rights, and financial reasons in late 1988, although it formally
recognized the SLORC regime in February of the following year and
allowed the resumption of some aid projects. Pressured by its major
ally, the United States, Japan was reluctant to undertake full-scale
economic engagement (that is, new large-scale aid), especially after
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JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH • 229

the SLORC’s house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi in 1989 and its re-
fusal to transfer power after the General Election of May 27, 1990
aroused strong criticism from Washington and other Western govern-
ments. However, Japan did not enact sanctions against the regime,
refraining from funding new aid projects but allowing old ones to
continue on a case-by-case basis. After 1988, Tokyo also forgave
much of Burma’s yen-denominated debt through debt-relief grants.
Inside Japan, many critics saw their government’s Burma policy as
ambiguous and opportunistic, but foreign ministry spokesmen
claimed that although Japan and the United States shared the same
goal, Burma’s democratization, the means were different, that is,
Japan was pursuing a “sunshine policy” rather than sanctions and
harsh criticism. However, Japan’s Burma policy was frequently diffi-
cult to decipher; for example, funds for modernization of Rangoon’s
Mingaladon Airport were disbursed under the inappropriate and
confusing category “humanitarian aid” in the late 1990s.
China has gained influence in the country at Japan’s expense since
1988. Presently, Japanese leaders emphasize the importance of deep-
ening ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) as a way of counteracting Beijing’s growing influence in
Southeast Asia as a whole; since Burma joined ASEAN in 1997,
Tokyo’s Burma policy has taken a regional, ASEAN perspective (for
example, Khin Nyunt was invited to attend the Japan–ASEAN Sum-
mit in Tokyo in 2003 in his capacity as prime minister). With its rich
natural resources, the country remains important to Japan’s economic
strategies.
Japanese often claim that Burma is the “friendliest country in Asia
toward Japan” because of wartime experiences, a common religion
(Buddhism), and shared values. Takeyama Michio’s novel, Harp of
Burma, a perennial best seller, is a sentimental story about Japanese
soldiers’ wartime sacrifices, and war veterans have visited the country
regularly to collect the remains and pray over the graves of their fallen
comrades. Aung San Suu Kyi studied at Kyoto University during the
mid-1980s. Since 1988, 10,000 Burmese exiles, many of whom are ac-
tive in the prodemocracy movement with the support of sympathetic
Japanese citizens, have established residence in Japan. See also
JAPANESE OCCUPATION: TATMADAW, HISTORY OF; WORLD
WAR II IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).
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230 • JAPANESE OCCUPATION

JAPANESE OCCUPATION (1941–1945). The Japanese invasion and

occupation of Burma was motivated initially by the need to cut off
the Burma Road, through which the United States and Britain pro-
vided supplies to the Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jyeshi) government in
Chungking (Chongqing). Acquisition of the country’s rich natural re-
sources, especially rice and petroleum, was another major objective
(though Allied submarines crippled the export of vital materiel to
other parts of the Japanese Empire between 1942 and 1945). Burma
was also used as a base from which to launch an invasion of north-
eastern India in March–June 1944, the Imphal Campaign.
Wartime administration of the country can be divided into three
periods: January–May 1942, a chaotic time when the Japanese army
successfully drove the British out of the country and local govern-
ment in many areas was controlled by the Burma Independence
Army; June 1942–July 1943, when the Japanese Military Adminis-
tration (Gunseikanbu) exercised full governmental authority; and Au-
gust 1943–August 1945, when Tokyo granted Burma nominal inde-
pendence within the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
However, Dr. Ba Maw’s government had little freedom to exercise
its authority because the Japanese commander of the Burma Area
Army remained effectively in control.
Burma was transformed by the occupation. The British defeat in
1942 shattered the myth of European superiority, making it impossi-
ble for them to reimpose the colonial system after the war. Old elites,
including Burmese civil servants and politicians, were swept aside.
The prewar plural society broke down after as many as 600,000 In-
dians, Anglo-Indians, and Anglo-Burmese fled Burma by land and
sea for the Subcontinent in early 1942. Many did not return after the
war. Though largely powerless, Ba Maw’s “independent” state as-
serted a Burmese, or Burman (Bamar), national identity, and pro-
moted “totalitarian” mobilization of the previously apathetic popula-
tion through party and mass organizations.
However, the most important consequence of the occupation was
establishment of a Burman-officered and manned army (known as
the Burma National Army after August 1943), the direct predeces-
sor of the Tatmadaw, which viewed itself not only as the defender of
national unity and independence but also as a revolutionary force
deeply involved in politics. Thanks in large measure to his prominent
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JAPANESE OCCUPATION • 231

role in the activities of the Japanese-organized Thirty Comrades and

the wartime army, Ne Win was able to become commander of
Burma’s armed forces after the Karen (Kayin) uprising in 1949.
The Thakins were disillusioned with Japanese intentions after it
became clear that Tokyo would not grant Burma immediate indepen-
dence in 1942. By 1944, they had organized an underground Anti-
Fascist Organization, and on March 27, 1945, now celebrated as
Armed Forces Day, Aung San ordered the Burma National Army to
rise up against the Japanese. Postwar Burmese historiography em-
phasizes Aung San’s leadership of the struggle against both the “im-
perialist British” and the “fascist Japanese.” However, the post-1988
military regime, the State Peace and Development Council, has
emphasized Japan’s positive contributions to Burma’s independence,
largely to secure Tokyo’s financial support.
Burma’s abundance of rice prevented the terrible famines that af-
flicted Indochina and Java during the war, though the country’s in-
frastructure was devastated and the presence of over 300,000 Japan-
ese troops on Burmese soil imposed a heavy economic burden. The
Kempeitai (Japanese military police), perpetually on the lookout for
Allied spies and communist agents, was universally feared and hated.
Outrages against local women by Japanese troops were not uncom-
mon, despite the “import” of large numbers of Korean, Chinese, and
other “comfort women” for the troops’ recreation (a small number of
Burmese women were also forced into this role). But the large-scale
atrocities that characterized the Japanese occupation of other South-
east Asian countries and China did not, for the most part, occur.
Japanese troops were instructed to regard the Burmese as their allies
and friends, in stark contrast to the situation in wartime China. When
they undertook their desperate retreat to the Thai border in 1945,
many Japanese soldiers were aided by Burmese villagers, who gave
them food, medicine, and shelter. Memories of Burmese kindness
provided a firm foundation for the postwar Burma–Japan relation-
ship. Postwar Burmese governments have also assisted Japanese vet-
erans’ groups in locating the graves of their fallen comrades, who
numbered as many as 190,000.
However, approximately 50,000 Burmese laborers, members of Ba
Maw’s “Sweat Army,” died under extremely harsh conditions, espe-
cially during construction of the Thai–Burma Railroad. Communal
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232 • JATAKA TALES

violence between Burmans and Karens in early 1942, especially in

Myaungmya (Myoungmya), and the fact that most of the ethnic mi-
nority “hill tribes” remained loyal to the British during the war, cre-
ated intense ethnic minority distrust of the Burmans, with negative
postwar consequences. The inflow of arms and armed men between
1941 and 1945, both in Burma Proper and the Frontier Areas, cre-
ated a vicious cycle of civil war and political violence that continues
to this day. See also JAPAN, RELATIONS WITH; MINAMI
KIKAN; PATRIOTIC BURMESE FORCES; SUZUKI KEIJI,
COLONEL; THAI–BURMA RAILWAY; WORLD WAR II IN
BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

JATAKA TALES. Part of the canon of sacred Buddhist literature, sto-

ries of Gotama Buddha’s previous incarnations, in human or animal
form, numbering 550 and composed between the third century BCE
and the fifth century CE. Their setting is commonly northern India,
especially Varanasi (Benares), and each tale has a moral message
(e.g., “associate with the wise and good”). In Burma, the Jataka tales
have been a major inspiration for the traditional performing and vi-
sual arts and form an important part in education at village
monastery-schools. Holy sites, such as pagodas, are often decorated
with illustrations of the Jataka Tales, and traditional marionette per-
formances during pwe reenact them.

JEWS IN BURMA. A small Jewish community has lived in Burma

since at least the British colonial period, and probably before,
mostly in Rangoon (Yangon). In the 1931 city census, Rangoon’s
Jewish population was recorded at 1,069 (out of a total of more than
400,000).The city’s only Jewish place of worship, the Musmeah
Yeshua Synagogue on 26th Street, was first built in 1854 and recon-
structed on a larger scale in 1896. Most of its congregation were
Sephardic Jews from the Middle East and India, but they have dwin-
dled in number since World War II, many emigrating to Israel. In
2004, the congregation was composed of only eight families. See
also ARMENIANS IN BURMA.

JUDSON, ADONIRAM (1788–1850). An early American Protestant

missionary, originally a Congregationalist but affiliated with the Bap-
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“JUMPING CAT MONASTERY” • 233

tist Church before arriving in Burma in 1815. His efforts to convert

Burmese Buddhists were largely unsuccessful, and the Burmese au-
thorities imprisoned him under harsh conditions during the First
Anglo-Burmese War. At war’s end, he moved to Moulmein
(Mawlamyine) and began preaching to Karens (Kayins), achieving
much greater success. Fluent in the Burmese (Myanmar) language,
he translated the Bible into Burmese, composed a Burmese grammar,
and wrote Burmese English/English Burmese dictionaries. He was
commemorated by the name of Judson College, which was a con-
stituent college of Rangoon (Yangon) University. See also MIS-
SIONARIES, CHRISTIAN.

JULY 7, 1962 INCIDENT. Following the establishment of the Revo-

lutionary Council (RC) by General Ne Win on March 2, 1962, the
government imposed tight regulations on university campuses, which
had been hotbeds of antigovernment activism. A dispute over campus
curfews, in which a student was injured, led to a large demonstration
on July 7 at Rangoon (Yangon) University. When the police failed
to control the students, the authorities called in a Tatmadaw regi-
ment, commanded by Sein Lwin and composed of ethnic minority
Chins, who could be expected to show little sympathy for the mostly
Burman (Bamar) demonstrators. The soldiers opened fire on the
students, a shocking and totally unexpected act. According to official
figures, there were 15 fatalities, although the actual figure may have
been as high as several hundred. In the early morning of July 8, the
Rangoon University Student Union building was blown up, al-
legedly on orders from Ne Win, although he accused RC member
Aung Gyi of the act.

“JUMPING CAT MONASTERY.” Buddhist monks at the Nga Phe

Kyaung monastery on the shores of Inle Lake in Shan State trained
cats to jump through hoops to wile away quiet days. This has become
a popular attraction for foreign tourists, although the 150-year-old
monastery also has a collection of interesting Buddha images and is
an excellent example of Shan wooden religious architecture. That
the performing cats are named after Hollywood movie stars—
Leonardo di Caprio, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt—shows the steady
progress of globalization in Burma.
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234 • KA KWE YE

–K–

KA KWE YE (KAR KWE YE, KKY). Because the Ne Win regime

lacked sufficient military and economic resources to control border ar-
eas, it began recognizing local warlord groups as Ka Kwe Ye, “home
guard” or “self-defense” forces, in 1963. In a classic “divide and rule”
policy, the regime expected KKY forces to assist in its fight against
communist and ethnic insurgents. In return, they were free to engage in
the opium trade. The policy went a long way toward fragmenting op-
position to the central government in Shan State. The two “kings of the
Golden Triangle,” Lo Hsing-han and Khun Sa, both became promi-
nent as KKY commanders in the early 1960s. More than 50 groups had
been organized as KKY by the late 1960s, but in 1973 the Ne Win
regime declared them illegal. The cease-fires initiated by the State Law
and Order Restoration Council with ethnic armed groups beginning
in 1989 resemble the KKY arrangements, since the cease-fire groups
have also been able to conduct private business. In both cases, govern-
ment recognition of the legal status of armed groups has led to a major
expansion in the drug economy.

KACHIN INDEPENDENCE ARMY/ORGANIZATION (KIA/KIO).

Before it signed a cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council in 1994, the Kachin Independence Army was one of the
best-organized and most-effective border area insurgencies, with “liber-
ated areas” encompassing much of central and eastern Kachin State
and a portion of northern Shan State, as much as 40,000 square kilo-
meters. It had an armed strength in the early 1990s of 6,000 guerrillas.
The Kachin Independence Organization is its political arm.
A handful of World War II veterans established the KIA/KIO in
February 1961 near Lashio. The new army’s goal was to create an in-
dependent “Kachinland,” reflecting disillusionment with the U Nu
government’s neglect of the Kachins, his plan to cede portions of
Kachin State to the People’s Republic of China, and his determina-
tion to make Buddhism the state religion (most Kachin leaders were
Christian). Its most effective leader was Brang Seng, a Rangoon
(Yangon) University graduate and former headmaster of a Baptist
mission school in Myitkyina, who went underground with the KIO
in 1963 and served as its chairman from 1975 until his death in 1994.
In contrast to the chaotic insurgent and drug warlord situation in Shan
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KACHIN STATE • 235

State, the KIA/KIO succeeded in presenting the Ne Win regime with

a united front, bringing together the Jinghpaw and smaller Kachin
groups, such as the Lashi, Lisu, and Maru. Sales of opium and jade
funded its operations, though not on the scale of groups in Shan State.
Its relations with other armed groups and neighboring countries was
characterized by pragmatism: It both fought and negotiated with the
Communist Party of Burma, joined the National Democratic Front
alliance of 11 armed groups, and received limited support from the
government of India.
The motivation for the 1994 cease-fire, which came after a 1991
agreement made by the Kachin Defense Army (formerly the fourth
brigade of the KIA), was a longing for peace after over three decades
of fighting and the belief that the political situation inside of Burma
was changing, that the KIA/KIO could play a constructive role in
bringing about a comprehensive reconciliation involving the ethnic
groups, the Burmese opposition, and the post-1988 military regime.
Since then it has been relatively successful in promoting develop-
ment within its territories, including the running of Kachin language-
medium schools, a Teachers Training College, and hospitals, and the
completion of infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, and hy-
droelectric plants. Its post-1994 achievements as a de facto “federal”
government are in large measure due to strong community organiza-
tion, though KIA/KIO chairman Zau Mai, who succeeded Brang
Seng in 1994, was forced from power in 2001 because of widespread
discontent with his top-down leadership and the alleged corruption of
family members. After the cease-fire, the State Peace and Develop-
ment Council gained control of the lucrative jadeite mines at
Hpakant, leaving the KIA/KIO short of revenues. It has turned to
selling timber to China, causing significant deforestation in the
Kachin State–China border area. See also NAW SENG.

KACHIN STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions, with an area

of 89,042 square kilometers (34,379 square miles) and an estimated
population in 2000 of 1.27 million (1983 census figure: 904,794). The
state capital is Myitkyina. Kachin State contains three districts (My-
itkyina, Bhamo, and Putao), subdivided into 18 townships. The topog-
raphy is rugged, with several mountain ranges and Burma’s highest
peak, Hkakabo Razi (5,887 meters or 19,315 feet). The highest peaks
in northern Kachin State are snow covered. Lowland areas include the
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236 • KACHINS

Hukawng Valley and the plains around the towns of Putao, Myitkyina,
and Bhamo. The state contains the headwaters of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River, which is navigable up to Bhamo, and Indawgyi
Lake, Burma’s largest. To the south, Kachin State is bounded by Shan
State, and on the west by Sagaing Division. It also has a long eastern
border with the People’s Republic of China and a shorter western one
with India.
Ethnically, the population includes the many subgroups of the
Kachin ethnic group, especially the Jingpaws, as well as Shans (Tai)
and Burmans (Bamars). Until the early 1990s, when a cease-fire
was signed with the State Law and Order Restoration Council,
much of the state’s territory was controlled by the Kachin Indepen-
dence Army, one of the best-organized antigovernment insurgencies.
The rough terrain limits agricultural potential, except in the plains,
but Kachin State is richly endowed with forests (though massive ex-
port of logs to China is causing serious deforestation) and has large
deposits of jadeite (jade), especially at Hpakant, which finds ready
markets in China and among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.
Other exploitable minerals include amber, gold, and iron. Small
amounts of opium have been cultivated in Kachin State.

KACHINS. One of Burma’s major ethnic groups, numbering 465,484

in the last official census taken in 1983 (1.4 percent of the total pop-
ulation). At the end of the 20th century, the Kachin population was
estimated at around one million. Most live in Kachin State or the
northern part of Shan State, although there are smaller Kachin com-
munities in China’s Yunnan Province and India’s Assam and
Arunachal Pradesh States. Kachin is a Burmese term, used in West-
ern languages to refer to six groups speaking Tibeto-Burman lan-
guages: the Jinghpaw, Rawang, Lisu, Lashi, Maru, and Atsi (Azi).
The Jingpaw or Jinghpaw (known as Jingpo in China and Singpho in
India) are the largest and most influential group; most of the leader-
ship of the Kachin Independence Army/Organization (KIA/KIO)
are Jingpaws, and their language serves as the Kachin lingua franca.
The KIO commonly refers to the Kachin people as Wunpawng
(“core” or “center”), an ethnically neutral term.
Although historical records are practically nonexistent, it is believed
that the Kachins migrated from eastern Tibet or southwestern China,
sharing a common origin with the Burmans (Bamars), Karens
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KACHINS • 237

(Kayins), Chins, and Nagas. Their legendary homeland is referred to

as Majoi Shingra Bum, “naturally flat mountain,” possibly the Tibetan
plateau. As mentioned, they speak languages belonging to the Tibeto-
Burman group, although these are mutually unintelligible. Their home-
land within Burma is the “triangle” formed by the two major tributar-
ies of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, the Mali Hka, and the
N’Mai Hka Rivers, north of Myitkyina, the present capital of Kachin
State. A warlike people, they spread from the triangle to the Hukawng
Valley and areas to the south, displacing earlier Shan (Tai) inhabitants.
They were completely independent of Burman power centers and
stoutly resisted the imposition of British colonial rule. The triangle—
the cradle of traditional Kachin culture and religion—was not com-
pletely “pacified” by the British until just before World War II. How-
ever, Kachins were recruited for the colonial army and fought bravely
against the Japanese, preventing their advance north of Sumprabum.
Putao (Fort Hertz) in northern Kachin State was one of the few areas
in Burma where the British flag flew before the successful Allied of-
fensives of 1944–1945. Major campaigns were fought in the Kachin
country, especially around Myitkyina.
Living among some of the highest mountains in Burma, Kachins
traditionally have been practitioners of swidden or slash-and-burn
agriculture, which in some cases has caused deforestation of upland
areas (though worse damage has been done by commercial over-
exploitation of forests since the 1994 cease-fire of the Kachin Inde-
pendence Army/Organization). In recent times, some Kachins have
settled in lowland areas, growing wetland rice. The cultivation of
opium is also widespread, though not as extensive as in the Wa and
Kokang regions of Shan State. Heroin addiction has become a seri-
ous problem in some parts of Kachin State.
Unlike the Burmans, the Kachins trace descent through the male line
rather than bilaterally, and they are one of the few indigenous groups
in Burma to use family names. Descent is carefully recorded, and the
five major descent groups (sibs) are the Marip, Lahtaw, Lahpai,
N’hkum, and Maran. Among chiefs is an elaborate system of exogamy
that determines which descent groups will exchange brides and
grooms. The manao, the traditional Kachin festival, was (and remains)
an important part of public life, hosted by chiefs and involving dances,
feasting, and sacrifices to the Kachin gods or spirits. Manao posts are
erected at the festivals and painted in colorful designs. Kachin women
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238 • KACHINS

are skilled weavers, and many of their patterns have enjoyed great pop-
ularity in other parts of Burma.
Anthropologists, most notably Edmund Leach (in Political Sys-
tems of Highland Burma), have described in detail two contrasting
social systems within Kachin society: the gumsa, a hierarchical sys-
tem in which hereditary chiefs (duwa) exercised authority over vil-
lage communities, possibly influenced by Shan political institutions
(the sawbwa); and the gumlao, a more horizontal or egalitarian sys-
tem in which authority was exercised by a local council. The British
suppressed the gumlao because they were associated with rebellion
against authority. The colonizers also outlawed the practice of slav-
ery, which was widespread in Kachin society before the early 20th
century.
Like other upland, Tibeto-Burman groups (such as the Chins), the
Kachins believed in a single creator God (Karai Kasang), and below
him a host of often malevolent spirits similar to the Burmese nats.
Very few Kachins became Buddhists. Christian missionaries, espe-
cially those associated with the American Baptist church, began evan-
gelizing in the mid- and late 19th century. The Swedish-American
Baptist missionary Ola Hanson, who worked among Kachins be-
tween 1890 and 1929, played a major role not only in converting the
people to Christianity but also in developing the Kachin language,
giving it a written script and translating the entire Bible into Jingpaw
Kachin (using the term Karai Kasang for God). The written lan-
guage, using Roman rather than Burmese letters, has been instru-
mental in promoting literacy and ethnic consciousness among the
Kachins. Although exact figures on the number of Christians among
the Kachins are not available, they are estimated to comprise over 90
percent of the population, with Baptists and Catholics being the
largest groups. Christian churches and schools have become major
institutions in Kachin life. Since all three Kachin armed groups—the
KIO/KIA, the Kachin Defence Army, and the New Democratic
Army-Kachin—signed cease-fires with the State Law and Order
Restoration Council in the 1990s, Kachin communities have en-
joyed peace for the first time since the KIO/KIA revolt broke out in
the early 1960s, but the price has been environmental spoilage and
social problems caused by rampant commercialization and the in-
creased influence of the central government, including the State
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KANDAWGYI LAKE • 239

Peace and Development Council’s efforts to promote Buddhism

among Christians and animists.

KADUS. One of Burma’s smaller ethnic minority groups, who live in

and around Katha district in Sagaing Division. Speaking a Tibeto-
Burman language, they cultivate rice on irrigated terraces and have
become largely assimilated to Burman (Bamar) culture, including
Buddhism. Traditionally, many of them work as ouzi (elephant driv-
ers) in the forests of Upper Burma.

KALAW. Located in Shan State on the edge of the Shan Plateau,

Kalaw, like Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin), was a popular “hill station”
during the British colonial period for Europeans seeking respite from
Burma’s hot season. Its population of approximately 20,000 includes
Indians and Nepali Gurkhas, as well as Burmans (Bamars) and
Shans. It is located near Inle Lake and the Pindaya Caves, popular
tourist destinations.

KAMMA. Kan in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, known as karma

in English, which means (voluntary) action. A basic doctrine of Bud-
dhism, which states that all voluntary actions accumulate merit or
demerit (kutho, akutho) according to their moral status. These are the
cause of good or ill fortune in future lives, that is, misfortune for evil
deeds, good fortune for good ones. Burmese people often say that a
person’s good or ill fortune is the “fruit” of good or bad kamma from
a previous existence. For example, a person who cannot free himself
or herself from poverty is considered to have been stingy in a prior
life. In everyday life, kan/kamma is often merely synonymous with
“luck.” Moreover, Burmese people do not equate all ill fortune with
bad kamma and often attempt to avoid it through use of magical prac-
tices, such as yedaya. See also ASTROLOGY.

KANDAWGYI LAKE. Known during the British colonial period as

the Royal Lakes, a body of water located just north of the down-
town district of Rangoon (Yangon) and east of the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda. The British built their Boating Club there; at present, the
lake is the site of traditional Burmese regattas sponsored by the
government.
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240 • KANDY CONFERENCE

KANDY CONFERENCE (1945). Meeting held September 6–7, 1945,

at the headquarters of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia, in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), at-
tended by himself, General William Slim, other top-ranking British
military and civilian officials, and leaders of the Patriotic Burmese
Forces (PBF) and Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, includ-
ing Aung San and Thakin Than Tun. The purpose of the conference
was to decide the future of the PBF and its integration into a new
Burma Army under British command. According to the agreement
between Aung San and Mountbatten published on September 7, the
PBF contingent was to consist of at least 5,200 men and 200 officers,
amalgamated with Karen (Kayin), Kachin, and Chin troops who
had fought with the British during the war. Infantry forces were to be
“class battalions” (ethnically defined), while other units were to be
“mixed.” Colonial officials close to the governor, Reginald Dorman-
Smith, opposed establishment of the army before the prewar civilian
government reassumed authority, but Mountbatten overruled them
after hearing the views of the Burmese delegation. The Supreme
Commander offered Aung San a commission in the new army, but he
refused, citing his determination to enter political life. See also TAT-
MADAW, HISTORY OF.

KAREN GOODWILL MISSION (1946). A four-man delegation,

consisting of Karen (Kayin) lawyers Saw Ba U Gyi, Saw Tha Din,
Sidney Loo Nee, and Saw Po Chit, who went to London in August
1946 to express to the British government their community’s opposi-
tion to being included in an independent state dominated by Bur-
mans (Bamars). Although they received a sympathetic hearing from
Frontier Areas administrator H. N. C. Stevenson, the policy of
Prime Minister Clement Attlee was integration of the Frontier Areas
with Burma Proper, as reflected in the January 1947 Aung San–At-
tlee Agreement. Thus, the mission ended in December without
achieving its purpose. See also KAREN NATIONAL UNION.

KAREN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (KNA). Considered by many

historians to have been the first genuine political association es-
tablished in British-ruled India (the Indian National Congress was
first convened in 1885), the KNA was founded in 1881 by Christian
Karens (Kayins). Its leaders, of whom the most prominent were San
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KAREN NATIONAL UNION • 241

Crombie Po and Sydney Loo Nee, hoped to use the KNA to advance
the interests of their community within the British Empire. When the
Montagu-Chelmsford hearings on political reform for India were
held in 1917, the KNA opposed the aspirations of the Young Men’s
Buddhist Association by arguing that the Province of Burma, be-
cause of its ethnic diversity, was not ready for self-government. The
KNA lobbied for special communal representation for the Karens in
the colonial legislature, and by the late 1920s had begun to advocate
a separate “Karen country,” to be located in what is now Tenasserim
(Tanintharyi) Division, which would be under British rule in a
decentralized Burmese federation of nationalities. Dominated by
Western-educated Christians, it was only in 1939 that the KNA es-
tablished a parallel association for Karen Buddhists, who in fact were
a majority within the Karen community. See also KAREN NA-
TIONAL UNION (KNU).

KAREN NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY (KNLA). Since 1975, the

armed force of the reunited Karen National Union (KNU), under the
command of Bo Mya. With a current strength of 2,000–3,000 armed
men and women, it operates in the Thai–Burma border area, although
its base at Manerplaw was captured by the Tatmadaw in 1995.

KAREN NATIONAL UNION (KNU). At the beginning of the 21st

century, the oldest and strongest ethnic minority organization oppos-
ing the Burman (Bamar)-dominated central government. It was es-
tablished on February 5, 1947, as a successor to the Karen National
Association, with Saw Ba U Gyi serving as its first president. The
KNU reflected Karen disaffection over the failure of the August 1946
Karen Goodwill Mission to London to convince the government of
Clement Attlee to recognize the establishment of a Karen state within
the British Commonwealth but separate from the Union of Burma,
and the signing of the January 1947 Aung San–Attlee Agreement.
Consisting of Karen veterans of World War II, the KNU’s armed
branch, the Karen Nation Defence Organization (KNDO), was estab-
lished in July 1947. The KNU refused to recognize Burma’s inde-
pendence on January 4, 1948, insisting on its demand for an inde-
pendent Kawthoolay (Karen Free State) that would have included
what are now Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) and Tenasserim
(Tanintharyi) Divisions, as well as other territories in Lower
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242 • KAREN NATIONAL UNION

Burma. In the words of a KNU publication: “[I]t is extremely diffi-

cult for the Karens and the Burmans, two peoples with diametrically
opposite views, outlooks, attitudes and mentalities, to yoke together.”
Memories of wartime atrocities, including the Myaungmya (My-
oungmya) Massacres, were still fresh in Karen minds.
Following the March 1948 uprising of the Communist Party of
Burma (CPB), Karen officers and men in the Burma Army and the
Union Military Police remained loyal to the government of Prime
Minister U Nu, but there were violent incidents in which Burman
sitwundan units attacked and killed Karen civilians, threatening a re-
newal of the racial violence of World War II. In January 1949, the
KNU went underground, and KNDO units seized control of Insein
(now Insein Township) north of Rangoon (Yangon) and Toungoo
(Taungoo) in Pegu (Bago) Division. Burma fell more deeply into
civil war. Karens who formed the backbone of the Burmese armed
forces deserted to join the uprising and were supported by the com-
mander of the 1st Kachin Rifles, Naw Seng, who captured Man-
dalay in March 1949. By May of that year, most of central Burma
and what is now Arakan (Rakhine) State were in ethnic and com-
munist insurgent hands, and U Nu’s government was called the “six-
mile Rangoon government” because its control barely extended be-
yond the capital. However, the “multicolored insurgency” was
undermined by ideological incompatibility and lack of coordination,
and the tide had turned in favor of the central government by early
1950. The KNU and its armed force, the KNDO, were driven from
central Burma into the upland areas near the Salween (Thanlwin)
River and the Thai–Burma border. Although sporadic unrest oc-
curred in Karen communities in the delta of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River until the early 1990s, the Karen hill country has
remained the heartland of the KNU insurgency up to the early 21st
century, a period of over five and a half decades.
One of the most important consequences of the KNU uprising was
the “Burmanization” of the Tatmadaw. Burma Army ranks left
empty by mutinous Karen and other ethnic minority soldiers were
filled, on both the officer and enlisted levels, with Burman members
of the sitwundan (although Chin soldiers remained largely loyal to
the central government). The Karen general Smith Dun was replaced
as commander of the armed forces by Ne Win.
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KAREN NATIONAL UNION • 243

During the 1950s and 1960s, the KNU underwent factional divisions,
largely along communist and anticommunist lines. A Marxist-oriented
Karen National United Party (KNUP) was established with its own
armed force, the Karen (or Kawthoolei) People’s Liberation Army
(KPLA), which increasingly adopted Maoist-style guerrilla tactics. The
KNUP and a second group, the Karen Revolutionary Council (KRC),
participated in peace talks with the Ne Win regime in 1963, but only
the KRC, led by the antileftist Saw Hunter Thamwe, agreed to lay down
their arms. By the late 1960s, the left-leaning KNUP and the Karen Na-
tional United Front (KNUF), founded and led by Saw Bo Mya, were the
major components and rivals within the Karen insurgency. In
1975–1976, the two factions were reunited as the Karen National Union
under Bo Mya, who rejected Marxism in favor of a nationalist, anti-
communist stance and purged leftists from the movement.
The KNU maintained a large administrative network in its liber-
ated areas along the border between Burma and Thailand. Econom-
ically, it depended on the exploitation of extensive stands of teak,
logs being exported to Thailand, and control of the black market
trade between the two countries, consisting of consumer and manu-
factured goods brought in over the border from Thailand in exchange
for Burmese raw materials. The major outlet for trade was Three
Pagodas Pass, controlled and sometimes contested by the KNU and
the New Mon State Party. The KNU refrained from participating in
the profitable trade in opium and other narcotics, because of both the
convictions of its leaders and the historical unfamiliarity of the
Karens with the drug. By the early 1980s, the KNU’s armed force, the
Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), had a well-trained and
equipped force of between 5,000 and 8,000 men, second only to the
People’s Army of the CPB, which had 8,000–15,000 men under arms.
The KNU became a member of the National Democratic Front in
1976, and of the Democratic Alliance of Burma in 1988.
The KNU and other ethnic minority armed groups did not partici-
pate in the Democracy Summer movement of 1988, but after Burman
student activists, who established the All Burma Students Demo-
cratic Front, left central Burma for the border areas, they were in-
cluded in the DAB united front under Bo Mya’s leadership and assisted
by the KNLA, which gave them training and some arms. Because the
KNU’s headquarters at Manerplaw, established in 1975, was also a
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244 • KAREN (KAYIN) STAT

focal point for other ethnic minority and Burman opposition groups, in-
cluding the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
(NCGUB), the Tatmadaw made it the target of concerted dry-season
offensives, especially during 1992 and 1995. The latter offensive suc-
ceeded in capturing Manerplaw and another base, Kawmoorah, deal-
ing the KNU/KNLA a serious blow. An important factor in their suc-
cess was the defection of the Democratic Buddhist Karen Army
(DKBA) from the KNU. The increasingly cooperative attitude of the
Thai government toward the State Law and Order Restoration
Council in the early 1990s also denied KNLA soldiers sanctuary on
Thai soil. Manerplaw’s fall resulted in an increased number of Karen
refugees fleeing to KNU-affiliated camps in Thailand, and left those
remaining behind vulnerable to systematic human rights abuses by
the Tatmadaw. As of 2005, the KNU, led formally since 2000 by Saw
Ba Thin, had not signed a cease-fire with the State Peace and Devel-
opment Council. Despite the growing receptiveness of Bo Mya, still
the KNU’s de facto leader, to a negotiated end to the war, the central
government remained unwilling in early 2005 to make concessions that
the Karen movement would find acceptable.

KAREN (KAYIN) STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions,

with an area of 30,383 square kilometers (11,731 square miles) and a
population estimated at 1.49 million in 2000 (1983 census figure:
1,055,359). Ethnically, the majority of the population belongs to
Karen (Kayin) groups. Until the mid-1990s, much of the state was
under the control of the insurgent Karen National Union (KNU),
which maintained strongholds along the border with Thailand. The
state capital is Pa-an (Hpa-an). Established in 1951, Karen State
contains three districts (Pa-an, Myawaddy, and Kawkareik), subdi-
vided into seven townships.
The topography is generally rugged. Mountains, such as the Dawna
Range, run from the northwest to the southeast of the state and have tra-
ditionally provided refuge for insurgents. Being elongated, Karen State
shares a boundary with Mon State to the west and southwest, Pegu
(Bago) Division) to the west and northwest, Mandalay Division and
Shan State to the north, and Kayah State to the northeast. It also shares
a long international border with Thailand to the east, southeast, and
south. The Salween (Thanlwin) River bisects the state before entering
Mon State and emptying into the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama).
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KARENNI STATES • 245

Forestry is economically important, though stands of valuable hard-

woods, such as teak, have been seriously depleted since 1988, when
the State Law and Order Restoration Council gave logging conces-
sions to firms from Thailand, which often practiced clear-cutting. Once
controlled by insurgent groups (such as the KNU and the New Mon
State Party), border trading posts (such as Three Pagodas Pass and
Mae Sot-Myawaddy) played an important role in Burma’s black
market, drawing in imports from foreign countries in exchange for
Burmese raw materials, such as forest products, rice, and livestock.
There are plans to open the “Asian Highway” through Mae Sot in
Thailand’s Tak Province into Burma by way of Myawaddy, which
would link Rangoon (Yangon) with Bangkok.

KARENNI NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE PARTY (KNPP). An eth-

nic minority armed group that operates along the Burma–Thai bor-
der in Kayah (Karenni) State. Its stated purpose is to defend the in-
dependence of the Karenni States, recognized by the British in
1875, from Burmese intrusion, although its leaders claim that they
will support their inclusion in Burma under a democratic and federal
scheme, reflecting the spirit of the agreement made at the 1947 Pan-
glong Conference between Aung San and ethnic leaders. Estab-
lished in 1957, the KNPP has split into several factions. One of
these, the originally pro-Communist Party of Burma Karenni Na-
tionalities Peoples Liberation Front, signed a cease-fire with the
State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1994. In the follow-
ing year, the KNPP also signed a cease-fire, but it broke down, and
there have also been armed clashes between the KNPP and the
smaller KNPLF.

KARENNI STATES. Comprising what is now Kayah (Karenni)

State, they were five principalities under the authority of Karenni
(Kayah) rulers who entered into a “subordinate alliance with the
British government” outside of the sovereignty of British India in
1875. This arrangement, which recognized the states as essentially
independent, was reluctantly recognized by the government of King
Mindon. They were administered as part of the Southern Shan
States with an administrative headquarters at Loikaw. The Karenni
States were Bawlake, Kyebogyi, Kantharawaddy, Nawngpalai, and
Nammekon.
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246 • KARENNIS

KARENNIS (KAYAHS). An ethnic minority nationality who live

largely in Kayah (Karenni) State and are closely related linguistically
and culturally to the Karens (Kayins). In the Burmese (Myanmar)
language, Karenni means “Red Karens,” referring to their dress. How-
ever, they generally consider themselves to be a separate group. Ac-
cording to official census figures, they numbered 141,028 in 1983. Be-
cause of fighting and “Four Cuts” pacification along the border, many
Karennis have become internally displaced persons or refugees in
Thailand. See also KARENNI NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE PARTY
(KNPP); KARENNI STATES.

KARENS (KAYINS). One of Burma’s major ethnic groups, consid-

ered the third largest after the Burmans (Bamars) and Shans
(Tai). In the last official census, taken in 1983, they numbered
2,122,825—6.2 percent of Burma’s total population at the time
(35.3 million). According to U.S. government statistics, they com-
prised 7 percent of a population of 42.5 million in 2003, or about 3
million (CIA World Factbook, 2003). The Karen National Union
claims that the “Karen nation” has a population of seven million.
Given the long interval since the 1983 census, the dispersed nature
of the Karen population, and the difficulty in some cases of defin-
ing ethnic boundaries between them and other groups, only an esti-
mate of the Karen population is possible; between three and four
million is likely. A smaller number of Karens, about 200,000, live
in neighboring Thailand.
The Karens speak closely related languages belonging to the
Tibeto-Burman group. According to their own folklore, they entered
Burma after crossing a “river of running sands,” which some ob-
servers have identified with the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Some
Christian missionaries claimed they were part of the Ten Lost Tribes
of Israel, citing their belief in a Creator God, Ywa, resembling the Old
Testament Yahweh. But linguistic and other evidence suggests that
the original Karens entered Burma from southwestern China at
around the same time as the Pyus and Burmans (Bamars), in the
early centuries CE. The Karen bronze drum, called a “frog drum” be-
cause of the ornamentation on its outer edge, resembles the Dong Son
drum of northern Vietnam, dated to the fourth century BCE. Frog
drums are precious possessions of Karen communities, and one ap-
pears in the Karen national flag.
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KARENS • 247

Today, Karen populations are widely distributed. They inhabit a

belt of upland and mountainous territory forming the border be-
tween Burma and Thailand, including southern Shan State,
Kayah (Karenni) State, Karen (Kayin) State, Mon State, and
Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division, as well as parts of Pegu
(Bago) Division, especially around Toungoo (Taungoo). In up-
land areas, they have traditionally practiced swidden or slash-and-
burn agriculture, similar to other “hill tribes.” Large numbers of
Karens also live in the delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
River, where they practice the cultivation of wetland rice and have
largely assimilated with adjacent Burman or Mon populations.
Karen communities are found in and around Bassein (Pathein),
Pyapon, and Henzada (Hinthada), in Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
Division. There is also a substantial population of Karens in Ran-
goon (Yangon), especially Insein Township.
Anthropologists generally divide the Karens into four major sub-
groups: Sgaw, Pwo, Pa-O, and Karenni (Kayah). According to
Karen mytho-history, the Sgaw and Pwo were rival groups, and the
former were generally identified as highlanders, while the latter were
plains dwellers. They speak different languages (or dialects), and the
Christian leadership of the Karen National Union has recognized
Sgaw as the basis for the standard Karen language, used in adminis-
tration, publications, and their education system. However, the Sgaw-
Pwo distinction does not appear to be especially significant within
the Karen community today. The Karenni and Pa-O are generally
considered, and consider themselves, to be separate ethnic groups.
Because the most prominent members of the Karen community
have been Christians, it is often assumed that most Karens are adher-
ents. In fact, Christians (mostly Baptists, but also including Seventh
Day Adventists and other denominations) are usually estimated at
around 25 percent of the total Karen population. Before World War
II, the British colonial government estimated that two-thirds of all
Sgaw Karens and 93 percent of Pwo Karens were Buddhist. A sub-
stantial number of Karens are animists, especially in the highlands.
Cults founded by charismatic individuals who pose as saviors, prom-
ising to deliver the Karens into a Promised Land, have been quite
common, for example, the tragic-comic God’s Army, led by twin
boys Luther and Johnny Htoo, which operated along the Thai–Burma
border in the late 1990s.
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248 • KARENS

Before modern times, the Karens, unlike the Mons, Arakanese

(Rakhines), and Shans (Tai), did not have a state of their own.
However, unlike the Chins and the Kachins, they were not so re-
mote from lowland power centers that they enjoyed the freedom
guaranteed by isolation. Thus, they have suffered a long history of
oppression at the hands of the Mons, Shans, and especially Bur-
mans, particularly during the Konbaung Dynasty. Karen spokes-
men claim that the name of the town of Meiktila in central Burma
actually comes from the Sgaw Karen meh ti lawn, meaning “falling
tears” because of the Burmans forced Karen slaves to dig an artifi-
cial lake there. Because they were not (at the time) Buddhists or
participants in Indo-Buddhist civilization like the Shans, Mons, or
Arakanese, the Burmans tended to look down on the Karens as the
“cattle of the hills.”
During the British colonial period, the once-oppressed Karens
enjoyed the benefits of being regarded by the colonizers as trust-
worthy allies. Missionaries provided them with a written language
(based on Burmese script) and a Western-style education at mission
schools, including Judson College (nicknamed “Karen College”),
which after 1920 was part of Rangoon (Yangon) University. Many
Karens became missionary teachers and preachers, serving not only
their own community but also other groups (such as the Kachins
and Chins). The British favored them with entry into the police,
civil service, and army. Many Karen women worked in the nursing
profession. In the British-operated forest reserves, Karen ouzis (ele-
phant trainers and tenders) and foresters were indispensable for the
extraction of teak.
Often, Karen loyalty to the British made them objects of resent-
ment in the eyes of the Burmans because they fought alongside the
colonizers in the Anglo-Burmese Wars and also helped suppress the
Saya San (Hsaya San) Rebellion of 1930–1932. During World War
II, elements of the Burma Independence Army massacred hundreds
of Karen villagers at Myaungmya (Myoungmya) and other locali-
ties in the Irrawaddy Delta, incidents that made the Karens deeply
suspicious of any Burman-dominated government. Remaining loyal
to the British, Karen guerrillas working with Force 136 played an im-
portant role in the Allied liberation of Burma from the Japanese in
1944–1945.
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KAWTHOOLAY • 249

Karen nationalism was fostered by community leaders with the ac-

tive encouragement of missionaries and colonial officials. Missionar-
ies founded Burma’s first newspaper, The Morning Star (Sah Muh
Taw), published in Karen at Tavoy (Dawei), in 1843; it continued op-
erating up until World War II. In 1881, the Karen National Associa-
tion was established, considered by some historians to be the first
genuine political organization in British India. Before the outbreak of
war in 1941, Karen and Burman/Burmese nationalism evolved in
fundamentally different directions: The former wanted continued
close association with Britain, while the latter, by the late 1930s, de-
manded full independence. Few Karens participated in the student
strikes at Rangoon University that attracted so many Burmans/
Burmese in 1920 and the late 1930s. After the war, the most impor-
tant Karen group was the Karen National Union (KNU), established
in 1947, which commenced an armed struggle against the central
government in early 1949 with the goal of creating a Karen country
independent of the Union of Burma. At the beginning of the 21st cen-
tury, the KNU is the only major ethnic minority armed group that has
not signed a cease-fire with the State Peace and Development
Council, although negotiations between the armed group and the
military regime have commenced. See also BA U GYI, SAW; BO
MYA; HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA; JUDSON, ADONIRAM;
MYAUNGMYA (MYOUNGMYA) MASSACRES; SEAGRIM,
HUGH; SMITH DUN, GENERAL.

KAUNGHMUDAW PAGODA. A pagoda located near Sagaing, built

in the early 17th century and reaching 46 meters (150 feet) in height.
Its distinct shape, rounded rather than bell-shaped like most Burmese
pagodas, is said to represent the well-shaped breast of a Burmese
queen. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; BUDDHA
TOOTH RELICS; STUPA.

KAWTHOOLAY. Or Kawthulay, the country of the Karens (Kayins).

The name literally means the “flowery land,” or “black land” (the lat-
ter referring to land that must be fought over). It denotes the territory
claimed by the Karen National Union when it initiated an uprising
against the Burmese central government in 1949, located around the
present Thai–Burma border. However, the Revolutionary Council
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250 • KAYAH (KARENNI) STATE

also used the term to refer to Karen (Kayin) State from 1964 to
1974.

KAYAH (KARENNI) STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divi-

sions, with an area of 11,733 square kilometers (4,530 square miles),
making it the smallest state and the second smallest of Burma’s re-
gional jurisdictions. The population was estimated at 266,000 in 2000
(1983 census figure: 168,429). The state capital is Loikaw. Kayah
State contains two districts (Loikaw and Bawlake [Bawlakhe]), sub-
divided into seven townships. Topographically, the state is part of the
Shan Plateau, and the Salween (Thanlwin) River bisects it in a
roughly north-south direction. Ethnically diverse, it is home to
Karennis (Kayahs), Burmans (Bamars), Karens (Kayins), and
Shans.
During the British colonial era, Kayah State’s territory comprised
five Karenni states—Kantarawadi, Bawlake, Kyebogyi, Nawng-
palai, and Nammekon—which in 1875 entered into a “subordinate al-
liance” with the British Indian government. These states were not
considered part of Burma, but independent, and their entry into the
Union of Burma was only recognized with the agreement signed at
the Panglong Conference of 1947. The Constitution of 1947 guar-
anteed it the right of secession after 10 years. Originally known as
“Karenni State,” the present name was adopted in 1951.
Kayah State is bordered on the north and northwest by Shan State,
on the west by Karen (Kayin) State, and on the east by Thailand. It
is well endowed with forest resources, and tin and tungsten are
mined at Mawchi. The Baluchaung hydroelectric plant, built with
Japanese war reparations, provides Rangoon (Yangon) with electric
power, although it is in poor repair, resulting in periodic blackouts.
See also KARENNI NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE PARTY;
KARENNI STATES.

KENG TUNG (KYAINGTONG). Also Kengtung, the largest of the

old Shan States, located east of the Salween (Thanlwin) River and
encompassing approximately 31,100 square kilometers (12,000
square miles) before the autonomy of its sawbwa was relinquished in
1959. The name also refers to the city that was the sawbwa’s royal
capital, the site of his haw or palace, which is now the most impor-
tant town in eastern Shan State. Home of the Tai Khun, a branch of
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KHANTI, U • 251

the Shan (Tai) ethnic group, Keng Tung traces its origins to the late
13th century, when the fortified city (möng in the Shan language)
was established by a Tai ruler related to the royal family of Chiang
Mai. The original inhabitants of the Keng Tung area were apparently
Wa, although the most numerous “hill tribe” people are Akha.
In the late 1760s, conflicting claims of suzerainty over Keng Tung
were among the causes of a war between King Hsinbyushin and the
Manchu Ch’ing (Qing) Dynasty. The city has long been an important
waystation in the trade between China and Thailand. A 19th-century
British account tells of an annual traffic of 8,000 mules bringing Chi-
nese goods by way of Keng Tung to Chiang Mai. During the British
colonial period the sawbwa of Keng Tung, like his counterparts in
other Shan States, enjoyed considerable autonomy. During World
War II, the Japanese transferred suzerainty over Keng Tung and an-
other Shan State, Mongpan, to Thailand.
After Burma became independent in 1948, Keng Tung suffered
heavily from war, insurgency, and, after 1988, the full impact of mil-
itary rule. In the early 1990s, the State Law and Order Restoration
Council opened an overland route for foreign travelers from Mae Sai
on the Thai–Burma border to Keng Tung, and the city is likely to play
an important role in the development of highway links connecting
eastern and northern Shan State with Thailand and China. The head-
quarters of the Triangle Regional Military Command of the Tat-
madaw is located there, and the Keng Tung area is subject to heavy
cultural “Burmanization.”
Among Keng Tung’s monuments are the Wat Zom Kham, which
according to legend dates from the lifetime of Gotama Buddha and
is said to contain six of his hairs, the Naung Tung Lake in the center
of town, and the old city gate (the city was originally surrounded by
a wall). Keng Tung is famous for its lacquerware. Over the protests
of local people, the ornate haw or palace of the sawbwa was torn
down by the military regime in 1991 and replaced by a tourist hotel.

KHANTI, U (U KHAN DEE, ?–1949). The famous “Hermit of Man-

dalay Hill,” who devoted his life to restoring Buddhist sites in and
around Mandalay and other parts of Burma. After spending 12
years as a member of the Sangha, he was invited by the Kinwun
Mingyi, at the time an advisor to the British, to collect donations for
the restoration of the temples on Mandalay Hill. He also collected
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252 • KHIN KYI, DAW

donations to build a reliquary on the hill to house relics of Gotama

Buddha that had been discovered in Peshawar (in present-day Pak-
istan) and donated by the British government to Burma. His zealous
construction efforts, spanning four decades, won him renown among
Buddhists worldwide, and many admirers claimed he had supernat-
ural powers.

KHIN KYI, DAW (1912–1988). Wife and widow of Aung San and
mother of Aung San Suu Kyi. A nurse, she tended to Aung San dur-
ing an illness and married him in 1942, bearing him two sons and a
daughter. She was a prominent member of the All Burma Women’s
Freedom League and the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League,
and served as director of social welfare in the government headed by
U Nu. From 1960 to 1967, she was Burma’s ambassador to India, the
first Burmese woman to serve in an ambassadorial post. A strict
mother, she had a formidable influence on her daughter, inculcating
in her respect for traditional values.
Daw Khin Kyi’s illness brought her daughter to Rangoon (Yan-
gon) in 1988. After she died on December 27 of that year, hundreds
of thousands of people attended her funeral, including Western am-
bassadors.

KHIN NYUNT (1939– ). From 1988 to 2003, first secretary (Secretary-

1) of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, known
before November 1997 as the State Law and Order Restoration
Council, or SLORC) and director general of Military Intelligence
(MI, also known as the Military Intelligence Service or the Direc-
torate of Defence Services Intelligence, DDSI), one of the most
powerful figures in the military junta established on September 18,
1988. After studying at Rangoon (Yangon) University, he com-
pleted the course at the Officers’ Training School (25th batch) and
received a commission in 1960. He was tactical operations com-
mander of the 44th Light Infantry Division when, following the
October 1983 Rangoon Incident, in which four members of the
South Korean cabinet and other officials were killed in a North Ko-
rean bomb blast, Ne Win ordered him to carry out a thorough reor-
ganization of Military Intelligence. In 1984, he was appointed di-
rector of MI/DDSI.
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KHIN NYUNT • 253

Although Khin Nyunt was appointed Secretary-1 of the SLORC

on September 18, 1988, and continued to hold this post when the
junta was reorganized as the SPDC in November 1997, attaining the
rank of lieutenant-general, he was relieved of this post on August 25,
2003, and appointed prime minister. Most observers saw this as a de-
motion, placing him outside the junta inner circle. Previously, he had
been the SPDC’s third-highest-ranking officer, below Chairman Se-
nior General Than Shwe and Vice Chairman General Maung Aye.
A protégé of the late leader Ne Win, Khin Nyunt was considered
better educated and more sophisticated than his fellow generals in the
junta and had a reputation for hard work and an austere lifestyle. His
command of Military Intelligence and a vast amount of potentially
incriminating data on his fellow officers and civilians made him uni-
versally feared and disliked, although his intelligence apparatus ap-
parently failed to forecast the landslide victory of the National
League for Democracy in the General Election of May 27, 1990.
During the 1990s, foreign observers recognized Khin Nyunt as
head of a “Military Intelligence faction” inside the junta that was
more receptive to economic reform and opening to the outside world
than conservative officers belonging to a rival “Regular Army fac-
tion,” headed by General Maung Aye. Some argued that he was more
willing than other generals to negotiate a political settlement with
Aung San Suu Kyi. He promoted close and friendly ties with the
People’s Republic of China (PRC), which apparently motivated
some officers to attempt to assassinate him in 1992 for selling out the
country’s independence. His role in brokering cease-fire agreements
with ethnic minority armed groups beginning in 1989 gave him con-
siderable influence in Burma’s border areas, especially among com-
ponents of the former Communist Party of Burma, and he was
prominent in the state-run media as head of numerous committees in-
volved with education, public service, and other matters. A conspic-
uous promoter of state-sponsored Buddhism, he served in
1998–1999 as patron of the committee responsible for renovating the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, replacing the hti (umbrella) that had been do-
nated to the pagoda in the 19th century by King Mindon.
On October 18, 2004, Khin Nyunt was arrested in Rangoon on
charges of corruption and attempting to split the armed forces. Ac-
cording to General Thura Shwe Mahn, his actions “could have led
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254 • KHUN SA

to the disintegration of the Tatmadaw and posed extreme danger for

the country.” He was dismissed from his post as prime minister (his
successor was Soe Win) and placed under house arrest. Hundreds of
his subordinates in Military Intelligence were arrested, and many oth-
ers linked to MI were retired or transferred to other posts. In 2005
Khin Nyunt was placed on trial inside Insein Jail and given a 44-year
jail sentence, suspended. It is believed he will be kept under house ar-
rest. See also BORDER AREA DEVELOPMENT; STATE PEACE
AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL, INTERNAL DYNAMICS.

KHUN SA (CHANG CHI-FU, 1934– ). Born in Loimaw, northern

Shan State to a Chinese father and a Shan mother, Chang first be-
came prominent as the commander of the Loimaw Ka Kwe Ye in
1963. He soon became a powerful figure in the opium trade but was
defeated in a Burma–Thailand–Laos border area “opium war” by
Kuomintang (Guomindang) rivals and was arrested and jailed by
the Ne Win regime in 1969. His loyal supporters captured Soviet
physicians as hostages in Taunggyi, Shan State, and used them to ne-
gotiate his release from prison in 1974. Using the Shan name Khun
Sa (“prince of prosperity”), he rebuilt his power base along the
Thai–Burma border and became Lo Hsing-han’s successor as “king
of the Golden Triangle.” By the early 1990s, his Mong Tai Army
(MTA, an amalgamation of smaller armed groups) was one of
Burma’s most powerful border area insurgencies, and the govern-
ment of the United States demanded Khun Sa’s extradition from
Burma as a drug trafficker. Khun Sa posed as a Shan patriot, but his
sincerity was doubted even before he signed a cease-fire with the
State Law and Order Restoration Council in January 1996. The
subsequent dismantling of the MTA altered the balance of power in
central Shan State, enabling the Tatmadaw to carry out harsh pacifi-
cation of the region, including the forced relocation of as many as
300,000 Shans. Khun Sa retired to Rangoon (Yangon), where he
manages several lucrative businesses. See also DRUG ECONOMY.

KHUNSANG TON-HUUNG (?–1917). A prominent Shan (Tai) leader

of the late 19th century, considered a folk hero. He defeated Burmese
and Shan forces sent against him by the Burmese king at Mandalay in
the 1870s. after the British asserted their authority over the Shan
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KODAW HMAING, THAKIN • 255

States, he became the sawbwa of North Hsenwi, with their backing.

Although a commoner by origin who engaged in the salt trade, the
British favored him over a royal rival to the Hsenwi throne because of
his courage and initiative. His daughter, Sao Nang Hearn Kham, mar-
ried Sao Shwe Taik in 1937 and was a prominent Shan patriot.

KINWUN MINGYI (1821–1908). Also known as U Kaung or U Kyin,

a Konbaung Dynasty court official who served as a senior minister
under Kings Mindon (r. 1853–1878) and Thibaw (r. 1878–1885).
Widely described as a reformer, he led two delegations to Europe, in
1872 and 1874. Although he had an audience with Queen Victoria in
1872, he failed to impress upon the British government Burma’s sta-
tus as a fully independent state, but did conclude commercial treaties
with France and Italy that subsequently aroused British suspicions
about alliances with rival European states. With the accession of
Thibaw and the growing power of his queen, Supayalat, the Kinwun
Mingyi lost influence at court but served until the British capture of
Mandalay in the Third Anglo-Burmese War. In 1897, he was ap-
pointed an advisor to the lieutenant governor of British Burma.

KODAW HMAING, THAKIN (1875–1964). Burma’s premier nation-

alist writer. He received a traditional monastic education and is said
to have witnessed British troops taking King Thibaw and Queen Su-
payalat off to exile in India at the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese
War while living at a monastery in Mandalay. He began a journal-
istic career in 1894 when he became editor of Myanma Nezin
(Myanma Daily) in Moulmein (Mawlamyine) and served as editor
of Thuriya (The Sun), one of the major Burmese (Myanmar) lan-
guage newspapers established during the colonial period, between its
inception in 1911 and 1921. He also became a professor at the “Na-
tional University” established as part of the National Schools move-
ment in 1921, but subsequently returned to journalism. During the
late 1930s, he was mentor and leader of the mainstream faction of the
Dobama Asiayone. Despite his traditional upbringing and strong
Buddhist beliefs, he seems to have been very receptive to the left-
wing ideas of the young Thakins, including Aung San; in reaction
to this, a right-wing Ba Sein-Tun Oke faction broke away from the
mainstream Dobama in 1939.
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256 • KOKANG

Kodaw Hmaing’s best-known writings are his tikas (long essays or

commentaries), which criticized British rule and those Burmese
politicians who cooperated with it. In Boh Tika (“On Europeans”),
published in 1913, he criticized those Burmese women who married
foreign men out of economic necessity. In Thakin Tika, written in
1935, he proclaimed his support for the Dobama Asiayone. See also
LITERATURE, BURMESE (MODERN).

KOKANG. A region of northeastern Shan State, east of the Salween

(Thanlwin) River and adjacent to the border with China, which
since the 17th century has been populated by Chinese who had been
loyal to the Ming Dynasty and opposed the Manchu conquest of their
country. For most of its history, Kokang was an autonomous state,
ruled by the Yang family, the Yang patriarch assuming the title of
heng, or ruler. Kokang came under British jurisdiction following the
Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1897 but was so remote from the center of
colonial power that its autonomy was largely unimpaired. During
World War II, the Yang heng supported Allied operations against the
Japanese, and in 1947, on the eve of Burma’s independence, was rec-
ognized by the British as a sawbwa.
Kokang is a poor, mountainous area, where soils are poor; for gen-
erations, the most important crop has been opium. After Kuom-
intang (Guomindang) irregulars from Yunnan Province entered
Shan State in 1950, Kokang farmers began cultivating opium poppies
in large quantities for export. Olive Yang (Yang Jinxiu), who was de
facto ruler of Kokang from 1960 to 1962, allied herself with the
Kuomintang to bring opium to the border with Thailand and interna-
tional markets. Another important figure in the drug economy of
Kokang was Lo Hsing-han, who served under Olive Yang, later co-
operated with the Ne Win government as commander of a Ka Kwe
Ye militia, and earned a reputation as “king of the Golden Triangle”
before being jailed and sentenced to death in Burma in the mid-1970s
(he was released in a 1980 amnesty). After Olive Yang was arrested
by the government in 1963, her brother, Jimmy Yang (Yang Zhen-
sheng), organized the insurgent Kokang Revolutionary Force.
Between 1968 and 1989, Kokang was under the control of the
Communist Party of Burma (CPB), but in early 1989 Kokang
troops, along with those in other communist-dominated areas, mu-
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KONBAUNG DYNASTY • 257

tinied against the CPB leadership; under Pheung Kya-shin (Peng

Jia-sheng) and his brother Pheung Kya-fu (Peng Jiafu) they estab-
lished a new armed force, the Myanmar National Democratic Al-
liance Army (MDNAA), which signed a cease-fire with the State
Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Lo Hsing-han
served as go-between, facilitating negotiations between the Pheung
brothers and SLORC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt. The agreement en-
abled the MNDAA to expand opium and heroin production and ex-
port, although the Kokang armed force’s activities in this area were
surpassed by the United Wa State Army in the neighboring Wa dis-
tricts and along the Thai–Burma border during the 1990s. Opium
eradication policies of the State Peace and Development Council
have encountered some success in Kokang because divisions within
the Kokang leadership make it easier for the military regime to exert
pressure. See also PANTHAYS.

KONBAUNG DYNASTY (1752–1885). Sometimes called the “Third

Burmese (Myanmar) Empire” because, like the Pagan (Bagan) and
Toungoo (Taungoo) Dynasties, it unified the country. Established by
Alaungpaya in 1752, it enjoyed a period of military expansion dur-
ing the reigns of Hsinbyushin (r. 1763–1776) and Bodawpaya (r.
1782–1819): The former conquered Siam (1767) and defeated a Chi-
nese invasion, while the latter subjugated Arakan (Rakhine). But
their successors were defeated by the British during the First, Sec-
ond, and Third Anglo-Burmese Wars. Although King Mindon (r.
1853–1878) implemented limited reforms and sought peaceful rela-
tions with the British, the Konbaung Dynasty was extinguished when
his successor, Thibaw (r. 1878–1885), was forced to abdicate by the
British and was exiled to India following British capture of the royal
city of Mandalay in November 1885.
Monarchs of the Konbaung Dynasty Year of Accession
Alaungpaya 1752
Naungdawgyi 1760
Hsinbyushin 1763
Singu Min 1776
Maung Maung 1781
Bodawpaya 1781 (or 1782)
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258 • KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF (NORTH KOREA), RELATIONS WITH

Bagyidaw 1819
Tharrawaddy 1838
Pagan Min 1846
Mindon Min 1853
Thibaw 1878 (to 1885)
Source: D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia. London: Macmillan, 1964.

KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF (NORTH

KOREA), RELATIONS WITH. Following the Rangoon Incident
of October 9, 1983, diplomatic ties between Burma and North Korea
were severed by the Ne Win regime and have not been formally re-
stored. However, there are reliable reports that Pyongyang has sup-
plied the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) with small
arms ammunition, 130mm field guns, and shipboard surface-to-
surface missiles. International suspicions about more ambitious arms
deals have been aroused by the frequency with which North Korean
freighters visit Burmese ports and the presence of North Korean tech-
nicians in the country, including those spotted at the Monkey Point
naval installation in Rangoon (Yangon). In late 2003, the Far East-
ern Economic Review published a report that the SPDC was thinking
of acquiring a nuclear reactor from Pyongyang, and there has been
further speculation that it wishes to purchase a North Korean–made
submarine for its navy. Given the junta’s seemingly insatiable ap-
petite for arms and North Korea’s position as a major arms exporter,
a substantial community of interests seems to exist between the two
pariah states. See also KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (SOUTH KOREA),
RELATIONS WITH.

KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (SOUTH KOREA), RELATIONS

WITH. Soon after the State Law and Order Restoration Council
seized power and initiated an “open economy” policy in 1988–1989,
Daewoo, a South Korea chaebol (business conglomerate), estab-
lished a presence in Burma, especially in the electronics sector. Other
major firms, such as Hyundai and Lucky-Goldstar, have also become
involved in projects during the 1990s and early 21st century, and Ko-
rean private foreign investment totaled about US$100 million. The
largest single project, development of an extensive natural gas field
in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Arakan (Rakhine) State, in-
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KUTHO • 259

volves the participation of Daewoo International in exploration. Al-

though Korean president Kim Dae-jung, a veteran of human rights
struggles in his own country, expressed solidarity with Aung San
Suu Kyi while in office (1998–2003), the relationship between Seoul
and Rangoon (Yangon) remains primarily economic in nature. The
South Korean government supplies Burma with some foreign aid
and technical training. See also OIL AND GAS IN BURMA; RAN-
GOON INCIDENT.

KOYIN. Or kouyin, a novice member of the Sangha, who has not been
ordained. Traditionally, most Burmese boys spend at least a short
time in a monastery as a koyin, following an elaborate shinbyu cere-
mony, the most important rite of passage for Burmese Buddhist
males.

KUOMINTANG (KMT, ALSO GUOMINDANG). Following the

communist victory in China’s civil war and the 1949 establishment of
the People’s Republic of China, about 2,000 Nationalist Chinese
(Kuomintang) troops crossed over into Shan State from Yunnan
Province and established bases from which Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang
Jyeshi) could open a “second front” against the communists (the first
front being on Taiwan). Aided by the U.S. government, the Kuom-
intang irregulars scored no victories against the People’s Liberation
Army in Yunnan, but their “secret war” against Beijing threatened
Burma’s sovereignty, especially when it became clear that the KMT
was seeking alliances with local ethnic insurgents, such as the Karen
National Union. During the mid-1950s, most units of the Tatmadaw
were committed to fighting the Kuomintang intruders, and joint op-
erations with the People’s Liberation Army were carried out in 1961.
Many KMT soldiers were forced to relocate to northern Thailand. To
raise funds, the KMT became deeply involved in the opium trade and
established mutually profitable working relationships with Shan
State warlords, especially the Yang family, the rulers of Kokang.

KUTHO (MERIT). In Buddhism, the idea that the performance of vol-

untary good works will ensure a fortunate rebirth, perhaps as a
wealthy, powerful, or talented male. There are three ways in which
merit can be accumulated: through adherence to moral principles
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260 • KUTHODAW PAGODA

(sila), such as refraining from drunkenness, illicit sexual practices, or

killing; through the practice of meditation; and through charitable do-
nations (dana) to monks or religious institutions. The last is most
common among ordinary Burmese Buddhists, and includes giving
food and other offerings to monks, sponsoring a shinbyu or ordina-
tion ceremony for a boy, and building or repairing a pagoda. Con-
struction of a new pagoda is believed by many Burmese to be the
most effective way to accumulate merit, though usually only the rich
and powerful can sponsor it. Propagating Buddhist teachings is also
a major source of kutho. Merit can be shared with or transferred to
others (including possibly the deceased). The doing of bad deeds ac-
cumulates akutho (demerit), with negative consequences for rebirth.
See also KAMMA.

KUTHODAW PAGODA. A pagoda, built in the style of the

Shwezigon in Pagan (Bagan), constructed by King Mindon in
Mandalay. The building itself is not especially significant, but on the
pagoda grounds are 729 marble stelae carved with the entire Tipi-
taka, or Buddhist scriptures, often called “the biggest book in the
world.” Each stele is covered by its own stupa. The king commis-
sioned them after completion of the Fifth Great Buddhist Council
in 1874. See also NU, U; GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, SIXTH.

KYAIK. A word for pagoda or Buddhist holy site in the Mon language
(equivalent to paya in Burmese), used in the names of some pagodas
in Lower Burma, where Mon kingdoms ruled before the mid-18th
century. They include Kyaiktiyo in Mon State and Kyaik Pun in
Pegu (Bago). Though less commonly used today than their Burmese
(Myanmar) language names, Kyaik Dagon/Kyaik Lagun is the Mon
name of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, Kyaik Athok that of the Sule
Pagoda, and Kyaik Mawdaw that of the Shwemawdaw.

KYAIKTIYO PAGODA. A major site of Buddhist pilgrimage, the

stupa is only 7.3 meters (23.7 feet) high, built on a boulder that hangs
precariously on a cliff in Mon State. According to legend, the boul-
der, which is covered by gold leaf, is secured to the cliff by a hair of
Gotama Buddha, deposited there by a hermit. The site is associated
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KYAUKSE • 261

with a legendary visit by the Buddha to Burma, and the pagoda in-
cludes the boulder in which the hair was placed, which was allegedly
lifted up to the edge of the cliff by Thagya Min, king of the gods. In
the Buddhist cycle of legends, the Kyaiktiyo is closely associated
with the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon). Because of its
religious importance, the State Peace and Development Council
sponsored extensive renovations of the site in 2001. See also AR-
CHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS.

KYANZITTHA, KING (r. 1084–1112). Third king of the Pagan

(Bagan) Dynasty and son of its founder, Anawrahta. Best known
for building the Ananda Pahto (Ananda Temple), he promoted the
commingling of Burmans and Mons, marrying his daughter to the
great-grandson of Manuha, Mon king of Thaton, and proclaiming
their child rather than his own son the legitimate successor (King
Alaungsithu, r. 1112–1165). Under Kyanzittha, the spectacular mon-
ument building at Pagan (Bagan) really began. See also MANUHA
TEMPLE.

KYAUKSE. Located south of Mandalay in Mandalay Division, the

site of a large irrigation complex that has played an indispensable
economic role in the development of organized states in Upper
Burma. Because rainfall is scarce year-round compared to other
parts of Burma, the surpluses of rice necessary to support complex
and densely populated societies can only be grown if fields are irri-
gated. At the end of the Konbaung Dynasty in the late 19th century,
irrigated rice fields around Kyaukse totaled 100,000 acres. Their ori-
gin is unclear. The irrigation complex was in existence before the Pa-
gan Dynasty, whose kings often used prisoners of war to maintain
the tanks and canals. The fields were extended by both Pagan and
post-Pagan Dynasty rulers, who had the grain brought by barge up
the Zawgyi and Myitnge Rivers to the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
River and then on to the royal capital. Other irrigation works are lo-
cated at Meiktila, Yamethin, and Minbu. Because Kyaukse is the
birthplace of Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State
Peace and Development Council, it has benefited in recent years
from special government-funded projects, especially in agriculture.
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262 • KYI MAUNG, U

KYI MAUNG, U (1919–2004). A leader of the National League for

Democracy (NLD), who served as the party’s vice chairman. Edu-
cated at Rangoon University, he took part in the anticolonial strug-
gle and joined the Burma Independence Army in 1941; between
1943 and 1945, he underwent military training in Japan. Although he
was a member of the Revolutionary Council of General Ne Win, he
fell out with the new regime, was forced to retire from the military,
and was jailed; he was imprisoned a second time in 1988. But in the
months before the General Election of May 27, 1990, when Aung
San Suu Kyi and U Tin U were under house arrest, he played a lead-
ing role in the NLD’s election victory, only to be imprisoned in Sep-
tember 1990. His retirement from politics and the NLD in 1997 is
said to have been caused by disagreements with Daw Suu Kyi.

–L–

LABOR STRIKES (1974). The inefficiencies and corruption of the so-

cialist economy caused inflation and shortages of necessities in the
early 1970s, and poor weather conditions in 1974 made shortages of
rice still more severe. On May 13, 1974, a strike at a railroad yard
near Mandalay broke out; the workers demanded higher rice rations.
The strike spread to factories in Mandalay and Meiktila, to oil field
workers at Chauk and Yenangyaung (Yaynangyoung), site of the fa-
mous 1938 oil field workers’ strike against the Burmah Oil Com-
pany, and to Arakan (Rakhine) State. By early June, more than 40
factories in Rangoon (Yangon) were closed down. In one incident at
the railroad yard in Insein, strikers forced the release of workers ar-
rested by the authorities. When strikers in Rangoon began making
political demands, calling for the restoration of parliamentary de-
mocracy, the Tatmadaw cracked down. The official casualty figure
was 22 dead, but the actual figure may have been in the hundreds.
Like the U Thant Incident, the labor strikes were a massive expres-
sion of discontent with the Ne Win regime, and anticipated the De-
mocracy Summer of 1988.

LACQUERWARE. One of Burma’s most distinctive arts. Lacquer-

ware items are usually fashioned of coiled bamboo strips, upon
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LAHUS • 263

which as many as seven successive coats of sap or resin (thit si in

Burmese) from a large tree (species Gluta usitata) are applied. These
trees grow in the wild and are not damaged by the process of ex-
tracting sap (the resin is quite different from Western lacquers de-
rived from insects, resembling those used in China and Japan). The
items are frequently engraved in delicate and complicated patterns,
using several colors (usually red, yellow, and/or green, on a black or
red background). After each layer of resin is applied, the wares are
placed for an extended time in a cool cellar for drying. The highest-
quality pieces are so supple that they can be bent without causing
damage to either the lacquer coating or the bamboo frame, and can
take as long as six months to make. Black, high-gloss items, upon
which gold leaf has been applied to form patterns or pictures, are
known as shwe zawa. Important centers of lacquerware production
are the Pagan (Bagan) area in Mandalay Division and Shan State,
especially Keng Tung.
Despite the growing popularity of Western-style utensils, lacquer-
ware is an indispensable part of Burmese daily life, in the form of
cups, trays and plates, tiffin boxes, sets of containers holding the in-
gredients for betel chewing, decorative plaques, Buddha images,
and hsun ok, elaborate, covered offering bowls used to carry dona-
tions for members of the Sangha. The history of Burmese lacquer-
ware is unclear, but the art is possibly derived from China, and the
more-sophisticated techniques, used for making the multicolored, en-
graved items (known as yun in Burmese), may have been brought in
recent centuries from northern Thailand. During the Burma Social-
ist Programme Party era (1962–1988), the quality of wares de-
clined because of the lack of resources, but in recent years there has
been an effort to improve it, making better-quality items for the
tourist and international markets.

LAHUS. An ethnic minority nationality who speak languages belong-

ing to the Tibeto-Burman group and live between the Salween
(Thanlwin) and Mekong Rivers in Shan State, around Keng Tung.
Linguistically the Lahus are closely related to the Akhas and Lisus.
Ethnologists divide them into several subgroups: the Lahu Na (Black
Lahu), Lahu Nyi (Southern Lahu), and Lahu Shi (Yellow Lahu).
Lahus live not only in Burma but also in China’s Yunnan Province,
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264 • LANGUAGES OF BURMA

northern Thailand (the Lahu Shehleh), and Laos. Traditionally, Lahu

village communities have been located on hillsides at elevations of
1,300 meters (4,000 feet) or more, and they practice slash-and-burn
(swidden) agriculture. Lahu men have a reputation as skilled
hunters. Village communities tend to be strongly self-sufficient.
Their religion is animist, though apparently influenced by (Tibetan)
Buddhism. By 1950, American Baptist missionaries in Burma
claimed 28,000 Lahu converts.
An armed group, the Lahu National United Party/Lahu State Army,
fought against the central government after 1973 but surrendered in
1984. The Lahu National Organization/Army, established in 1985, is
based along the Thai–Burma border near Mae Hong Son and cooper-
ates with Karenni (Kayah) insurgents.

LANGUAGES OF BURMA. According to one estimate, Burma has

107 “living languages.” Most of Burma’s indigenous languages be-
long to the Tibeto-Burman subgroup of Sino-Tibetan languages.
They include not only the Burmese (Myanmar) language, which is
the most widely spoken, but also the languages of the Akhas, Chins,
Kachins, Karens (Kayins), Lahus, and Nagas. The prevalence of
this language subgroup indicates that the origin of most of the pres-
ent inhabitants of Burma was Tibet or southwestern China. The ma-
jor non-Tibeto-Burman languages include the Shan language, which
belongs to the Tai-Kadai group, bearing close affinities to the lan-
guage of Thailand, and the languages of the Mons, Palaung, and
Wa, which are Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic), sharing a common origin
with Cambodian (Khmer). The Moken speak an Austronesian lan-
guage, related to Malay. Among nonindigenous languages, English
and Chinese are widely used, the latter being important in the
China–Burma border areas. Although Pali is not a vernacular, its role
as the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism gives it an incompa-
rable importance in Burmese life. See also MON LANGUAGE.

LASHIO. A major town in northern Shan State, with an estimated pop-

ulation of over 110,000 in 1996. It serves as the terminus for the rail-
road line running south/southwest to Mandalay and Rangoon (Yan-
gon), and before World War II linked Burma’s capital by rail with
the Burma Road, which enabled the Allies to ship weapons and sup-
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LAW IN BURMA • 265

plies overland to Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jyeshi) at his wartime cap-

ital of Chungking (Chongqing). The Japanese capture of Lashio in
May 1942 cut off the Burma Road. Before the signing of cease-fires
with ethnic minority armed groups, Lashio, close to the Chinese bor-
der, was strategically sensitive, and off limits to foreign visitors.

LAW IN BURMA (PRECOLONIAL AND MODERN). During their

colonial occupation of Burma, the British claimed that they were
bringing the blessings of the rule of law to the country, but Burma al-
ready had well-established legal institutions going back at least to the
Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty. In Thant Myint-U’s words, “the Irrawaddy
basin possesses one of the oldest legal traditions in the world” (The
Making of Modern Burma, Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001,
p. 87). The model for Burmese law was the legal code of Manu, the
original lawgiver in the Hindu Indian tradition, but the major legal
writings, Dhammathat (Dharmasastra in Sanskrit), were compila-
tions of customary law and precedent that reflected conditions in
Burmese society. Some 36 Dhammathats were compiled between the
first millennium CE and the 19th century, of which 26 were produced
during the Konbaung Dynasty, which seems to have been a golden
age for Burmese law.
In addition, Burma seems to have been the only Asian country in
which a class of professional lawyers or legal representatives (shay
nay) was recognized. Trained as apprentices by experienced lawyers,
they accepted private clients and argued their cases before royal
judges. Civil law (lawka wut) was distinguished from criminal law
(raza-wut, dealing with violations of the “king’s peace”); there were
sophisticated rules of evidence; and witnesses were required to swear
an oath, perjury being threatened with terrible punishments (in the
next life, if not in this). Lawyers wore special dress in court, collected
standardized fees (plus a percentage of the value of the issue under
judgment), and lived in a special quarter of town.
During the Konbaung Dynasty, the myowun heard criminal cases,
and tayathugyi presided over civil cases in provincial administrative
centers; in the royal capital, the Hluttaw functioned as the court of
final appeal. Although bloody executions were common during times
of struggle over royal succession (e.g., when King Thibaw suc-
ceeded King Mindon in 1878), Buddhist precepts precluded capital
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266 • LAW IN BURMA

punishment on other occasions. Sometimes members of the Sangha

intervened to save someone from execution.
British annexation of Burma during the 19th century led to the im-
position of a foreign legal model, and Burmese customary law was
restricted to three “native law zones”: religion, marriage, and succes-
sion (inheritance), which became known as “Burmese Buddhist law”
or “Dhammathat law.” By the early 20th century, a class of British-
educated Burmese attorneys, nicknamed the “barristocrats” because
of their prestige and high social position, had become prominent in
political as well as legal life. They included Ba Maw, his brother Ba
Han, Sydney Loo Nee, and Mya Bu, the latter serving as prime min-
ister in the wartime, pro-Japanese government of Ba Maw. Under
British rule, the Burmese became a litigious people, freely resorting
to the courts to solve all manner of disputes.
The British-style legal system, including the tradition of the inde-
pendence of the judiciary, remained largely intact during the period
when U Nu was prime minister. However, after Ne Win established the
Revolutionary Council in March 1962, it was steadily undermined.
On the advice of Dr. Maung Maung, who was the most influential le-
gal expert during the Ne Win period (1962–1988), the entire legal sys-
tem was reformed in 1972, creating a system of socialist legality in
which the courts were subordinate to the Burma Socialist Pro-
gramme Party (BSPP), the revolutionary vanguard party. The judici-
ary consisted of People’s Courts, whose officials were not legal pro-
fessionals (though they accepted the nonbinding advice of such
professionals) but were lay judges chosen by the BSPP. On the central
government level, the judiciary was controlled by the Council of Peo-
ple’s Justices. Lawyers became People’s Attorneys, paid by the state
and under the control of the Council of People’s Attorneys, operating
“law offices” on the state/division and township levels. Both Councils
were responsible to the State Council and the Pyithu Hluttaw.
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
was established in September 1988, the Constitution of 1974, which
defined the structure of the judicial system, became inoperative, and
the SLORC junta ruled by means of decrees. According to SLORC
Announcement No. 1/90, it exercised exclusive judicial power. If
natural law concepts—that independent jurists could arrive at proper
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LET YA, BO • 267

decisions through the exercise of reason and impartiality—were re-

flected in both the dynastic and British legal traditions, after 1962,
and especially after 1988, a crude legal positivism was exercised; that
is, in John Austin’s words, law was quite literally the “command of
the sovereign.” See also MAHA THAMADA.

LEDI SAYADAW (1846–1923). A prominent member of the Sangha,

who after the Third Anglo-Burmese War and the fall of Mandalay
in 1885 established a monastery near Monywa in what is now
Sagaing Division, later traveling to different parts of the country to
promote Buddhism. He taught and wrote extensively on the Pali
Canon and vipassana (insight) meditation, some of his works being
translated into English. He is most famous, however, for publishing
an essay, “On the Impropriety of Wearing Shoes on Pagoda Plat-
forms,” which supported the campaign by the Young Men’s Bud-
dhist Association after 1916 to ban this practice, mostly by Western
tourists visiting the Shwe Dagon Pagoda and other holy sights. See
also “SHOE QUESTION.”

LEDO ROAD. A 1,079-mile-long strategic route that started from

Ledo in northeastern India and intersected the Burma Road at the
Burma–China border, which the Japanese cut off in 1942. It passed
through what is now Kachin State. Constructed by 35,000 Burmese,
Indian, and Chinese laborers and 15,000 U.S. Army personnel (most
of whom were Afro-Americans) under terrible conditions, it was
completed by January 1945 and made overland supply of Nationalist
China from India possible. It was also known as the “Stilwell Road.”
See also MERRILL’S MARAUDERS; WORLD WAR II IN
BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

LET YA, BO (1911–1978). Nom de guerre of Thakin Hla Pe, member

of the Dobama Asiayone who became one of the Thirty Comrades.
In 1947, he negotiated a defense agreement with the British, the “Let
Ya-Freeman Agreement,” which was included in the October 1947
Nu–Attlee Agreement. After Burma’s independence in 1948, he
went into private business, but then joined former Prime Minister U
Nu’s Parliamentary Democracy Party in the late 1960s and served
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268 • LIGHT INFANTRY DIVISIONS

as commander of its armed units in the Thai–Burma border area. He

was killed in an engagement with Karen (Kayin) insurgents on No-
vember 29, 1978.

LIGHT INFANTRY DIVISIONS (LID). Elite units of the Burmese

Army designed for mobile operations. The first Light Infantry Divi-
sion, the 77th LID, was established in 1966 to fight the forces of the
Communist Party of Burma in the Pegu (Bago) Yoma region. Dur-
ing Democracy Summer, the 22d and 33d LIDs were deployed in
Rangoon (Yangon) to suppress antigovernment demonstrations. At
the beginning of the 21st century, the Army contained 10 LIDs, in-
cluding the 11th LID, based at Htaukkyan, north of Rangoon, which
can be used to contain unrest in the former capital. LIDs are under the
control of the Ministry of Defense rather than the Army’s Regional
Military Command structure.

LIMBIN CONFEDERACY. An alliance of sawbwas of the Shan

States, established in 1883, initially to oppose King Thibaw. It
backed the accession to the throne of the Limbin Prince, a member of
the Konbaung royal family, in the hope that he would recognize the
autonomy of the Shan States and abolish the oppressive thathameda
(household) tax. When the British removed Thibaw from the throne
at the end of 1885, the Confederacy, whose stoutest supporters in-
cluded the rulers of Lawksawk, Mongnai, and Mongpawn, became
an anti-British movement, which attempted to win the support of Sao
On, sawbwa of Yawnghwe, who chose instead to side with the
British. There ensued what amounted to a civil war between the Con-
federacy and pro-British sawbwas. In May 1887, the Limbin Prince
surrendered to James G. Scott, British administrator for the Shan
States, and went into exile in India. See also PACIFICATION OF
BURMA.

LISUS. An ethnic minority nationality who speak languages belonging

to the Tibeto-Burman group and live in Shan State, with smaller
concentrations in Kachin State, around Bhamo and Myitkyina. Lin-
guistically, the Lisus are closely related to the Akhas and Lahus. The
“Black” Lisus, traditionally known for their independence from any
kind of central control, live mostly in China’s Yunnan Province,
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LITERATURE, BURMESE • 269

while “Tame” Lisus, who have adopted aspects of Chinese culture,

live in northern Shan State. A small number have settled in the north-
ernmost parts of Thailand. Traditionally, Lisu village communities
are found in upland areas and practice slash-and-burn (swidden)
agriculture. Many cultivate poppies and trade in opium. They are
animists, with a belief in multiple, often malevolent, spirits, and also
practice a form of ancestor worship.

LITERATURE, BURMESE (DYNASTIC PERIOD). Burmese liter-

ature during the dynastic period—from the early Pagan Dynasty un-
til the end of the Konbaung Dynasty—was characterized by
strongly religious themes relating to Buddhism, an emphasis on the
idealized achievements of kings, and the development of sophisti-
cated forms of verse. Fictional works in prose, novels, and short sto-
ries did not appear until the British colonial period. Literature sur-
viving from the early centuries is found on stone inscriptions
(Kyauk-sa), the earliest being the Rajkumar or Myazeidi Inscription
of 1113, carved on a four-faced stele with passages in the Burmese
(Myanmar) language, Pali, the Mon language, and the language of
the Pyus. Its subject matter is devoted to the Buddhist good works of
members of the royal family. The earliest extant Burmese verse is
also found on a stone inscription dating from 1374, but it is dedica-
tory or panegyric rather than lyrical in nature.
The use of palm leaves (pei-za) inscribed with a stylus and paper
folded into a book, accordion-style (parabaik), dates at least to the Pa-
gan period, but no manuscripts from that time have survived. The ear-
liest extant literature in this form comes from the Ava (Inwa) Period
(1364–1555): a palm leaf manuscript titled the Yakhaing Minthami
(Princess of Arakan), dated to 1455. Most authors during the Ava Pe-
riod were members of the Sangha, men who had spent many years in
Buddhist monasteries, and their themes with few exceptions remained
religious and royal. Probably the greatest of the monk-poets was Shin
Rathtathara (1468–1530), who wrote on the competing attractions of
the worldly and monastic life. Distinct verse-forms emerged: the
eigyin (historical ballads, e.g., the Yakhaing Minthami, above), maw-
gun (odes in praise of royal personages), and pyo (verses based on the
Jatakas, or birth-tales of the Buddha, a medium in which Rathtathara
excelled).
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270 • LITERATURE, BURMESE

A fourth verse form, yadu, were short poems, one to three stanzas
long, on a wider variety of themes, including nature, romantic love,
and the experiences of soldiers in war. During the Toungoo Dynasty
(1555–1752), yadu poetry flourished, the most renowned poets being
Nawaday the Elder (1545–1600) and Prince Nat Shin-naung (1578–
1619). The early 18th-century writer Padei-tha-ya-za (1633–1754)
composed pyo on nonreligious themes and also wrote about the com-
mon people. After the conquest of Ayuthaya, the capital of Siam, by
King Hsinbyushin in 1767, Burmese literature was strongly influ-
enced by Siamese (Yodaya) styles. During the 19th century, new lit-
erary forms emerged, including the yagan, a long narrative poem, and
the pya-zat, or drama. Important writers included U Sa (1766–1853),
Letwet Thondara, the Hlaing Princess, and the dramatist U Ponnya
(1812–1867). During the late Konbaung period, dramas were ex-
tremely popular, and printed plays became bestsellers, in some sense
anticipating the novels and short stories of the colonial and postcolo-
nial eras. Between 1875 and 1900, 400 pya-zat were written and pub-
lished.
Historical literature was in the form of thamaing, the histories of
pagodas, monasteries, or local districts, and yazawin, or royal chron-
icles (rajavamsa in Pali). U Kala (1678–1738) produced the Maha
Yazawin-gyi (the Great Chronicle) in 1724, covering the period from
the legendary beginning of the Burmese kingdom until 1711. King
Bagyidaw commissioned a group of scholars to compile an official
history, the Hman-nan Yazawin-daw-gyi (Glass Palace Chronicle)
between 1829 and 1832, based largely on U Kala’s work. A supple-
ment to this was commissioned by King Mindon but not published
until 1899. See also LITERATURE, BURMESE (MODERN).

LITERATURE, BURMESE (MODERN). Because of Western influ-

ences, Burmese literature had undergone great changes by the begin-
ning of the 20th century. One was the appearance of the novel. In the
Burmese (Myanmar) language, “novel” is translated as ka-la-paw
wut-htu, “the day’s narrative,” as contrasted with the traditional Hpaya-
haw wut-htu, “narrative preached by the Buddha.” The first Burmese
novel was James Hla Gyaw’s Maung Yin Maung Ma Meh Ma Wut-htu
(The Story of Master Yin Maung and Miss Meh Ma), published in
1904. It was an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of
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LITERATURE, BURMESE • 271

Monte Cristo, set in Upper Burma. A popular adventure story, it in-

spired many imitators despite the disapproval of the older generation,
including conservative members of the Sangha.
By the second and third decades of the 20th century, social themes,
often critical of colonialism, became prominent in popular literary
works. Two novels by U Latt, Zabebin and Shwepiso, appearing from
1912 to 1914, expressed concern about the loss of traditional
Burmese values under colonial rule; U Maung Gyi wrote novels in
the 1920s about past Burmese heroes, Nat Shin-naung and Tabinsh-
wehti; and U Lun (later known as Thakin Kodaw Hmaing) wrote
tikas (long essays) on the evils of British rule, for example, the Boh
Tika (“On Europeans”), which advised against Burmese women mar-
rying foreigners, an issue adopted by the Young Men’s Buddhist As-
sociation. Thein Pe Myint became controversial because of his 1936
novel Tet Pongyi (Modern Monk), which exposed the corruption of
the contemporary Sangha; P. Monin wrote novels about the common
people; and Dagon Khin Khin Lay, the first woman novelist, wrote
short stories and historical novels. In 1933–1934, two Khitsan (“Test-
ing the Times”), anthologies of short stories and poems, were pub-
lished by students of the first Burmese professor of English at Ran-
goon (Yangon) University, U Pe Maung Tin. The Khitsan expressed
distinctly modern styles and themes; one of the most prominent writ-
ers involved in the Khitsan movement was Zawgyi, a poet and liter-
ary critic who espoused revolutionary and nationalist themes.
The chaos of World War II made it difficult for Burmese writers
to perfect their craft, although Thein Pe Myint’s experiences pro-
vided material for his popular nonfiction Sit Ah Twin Kha Ye The
(Wartime Traveller). In 1947, on the eve of independence, the gov-
ernment established the Burma Translation Society, later known as
the Sarpay Beikman (House of Literature), which awarded prizes to
talented writers. The first prize was given in 1948 to Min Aung for
Mo Auk Myebin (The Earth under the Sky). Prime Minister U Nu was
a writer of not inconsiderable talent, publishing his memoirs, Nga
Hnit Yathi (Five Years), and a play. During the parliamentary period
(1948–1962), the government promoted a national literature but did
not impose tight controls on writers.
Postwar literature was influenced by Soviet as well as British and
American models, and there was a renewed emphasis on depicting
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272 • LITERATURE, BURMESE

the hardships of ordinary people; an example of this genre was

Maung Htin’s Nga Ba (The Peasant). Ludu U Hla, a prolific leftist
writer, produced Hlaing chaine-hte-ga-nhet-myar (The Caged Ones),
an account of his four years in jail in the 1950s, which told the life
stories of fellow prisoners. Maung Ne Win’s Lu Pyi Hmar Ah Ne Ye
Like Pa (Courage to Live in This Human World), published in 1960,
described the desperate poverty of a young woman whose husband
must go far away to earn a living. One of the most important postwar
woman writers was Gyanegaw Ma Ma Lay, whose Mon-ywei Mahu
(Not out of Hate) told the tragic story of a traditional Burmese young
woman and her unhappy—and ultimately fatal—marriage to a West-
ernized Burmese man. It is one of the few Burmese novels translated
into English.
Taya (Star) Magazine, established by the left-wing writer Dagon
Taya, was highly influential in literary circles. Beginning in the
1920s and 1930s, monthly literary magazines such as Dagon and
Gandalawka (The World of Books) played an indispensable role in
promoting vernacular literature. Along with Taya, their most impor-
tant postwar counterparts included Shumawa, Thwei-thauk, and
Myawaddy.
During the Burma Socialist Programme Party era (1962–
1988), the state viewed writers as “mental workers” who had to
contribute to the building of socialism. The Ne Win regime estab-
lished an “Organization Committee for the Federation of Literary
Workers” in 1965; many of its members were later purged. The
preferred genre was a Burmese version of Soviet-style “socialist
realism,” and literary output was severely censored by the Press
Scrutiny Board. Few high-quality novels were produced because
authors were reluctant to submit a long work, to which they would
have devoted much time, to the Board’s ambiguous and unpre-
dictable criteria. However, the monthly literary magazines pub-
lished many short stories because the costs of having a shorter work
“inked out” were much lower for both writers and the handful of
private publishers, for whom publishing a long novel was a risky
investment. Because of Burma’s economic stagnation during this
time, there were frequent shortages of paper for printing and other
materials. Typewriters were generally unavailable at state stores,
and black market prices for them were prohibitive. Burmese pub-
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LOIKAW • 273

lishers in 1971 turned out a total of 2,106 titles; this number had
fallen to 584 titles by 1976.
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized
power in 1988, the severe and arbitrary censorship regime under the
Press Scrutiny Board continued, and a number of writers, including
the distinguished poet Tin Moe, have since been jailed or have left the
country. Few observers of the Burmese literary scene believe that
quality literature can be produced under these circumstances, al-
though the volume of publications has grown compared to the Ne
Win period. See also LITERATURE, BURMESE (DYNASTIC PE-
RIOD); MASS MEDIA IN BURMA.

LO HSING-HAN (LUO XINGHAN, 1934– ). Born in Kokang in

northeastern Shan State, Lo Hsing-han served in forces commanded
by the ruling Yang family before defecting to the Ne Win govern-
ment in 1963 and becoming leader of a Ka Kwe Ye militia force. By
the early 1970s, Lo had earned the title “king of the Golden Triangle”
for his prominent role in the lucrative export of opium and heroin to
Thailand and international markets. When the government issued an
order disbanding the Ka Kwe Ye militias in 1973 he went under-
ground, but he was arrested in Thailand and extradited to Burma,
where he was sentenced to death in 1976. Released from jail in a
1980 amnesty, Lo cooperated with the government as leader of the
Shan State Volunteer Force. When the Communist Party of Burma
(CPB) broke up in early 1989, he played a crucial role in negotiating
cease-fires between the State Law and Order Restoration Council
and ethnic components of the CPB. Retiring to Rangoon (Yangon),
he established postsocialist Burma’s largest business conglomerate,
Asia World, which has made substantial investments in real estate,
tourism, and transportation and seems to have received “laundered”
funds from the flourishing drug economy. One of its enterprises is a
toll road connecting opium-growing areas in Shan State with the
Chinese border. Asia World’s managing director is Lo Hsing-han’s
son, Steven Law, who has close ties with Singaporean and Malaysian
business people. See also KHUN SA.

LOIKAW. The capital of Kayah State; its population was estimated at

48,017 in 1996. Located at an elevation of 1,200 meters, it remains
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274 • LONGYI

largely off-limits to visitors. Nearby is the Baluchaung Hydroelectric

plant, built with Japanese war reparations, which provides Burma
with much of its electric power.

LONGYI. The distinctive lower garment worn by Burmese, which re-

sembles the wraparound Malay sarong. Male longyis, known as pa-
soe, are usually subdued in color, often with a checked pattern (such
as the Kachin-style longyi, which became associated with political
activism during 1988), and the male wearer traditionally ties it in
front. Women’s longyis, known as thamein (or htamein), are more
colorful, often skillfully woven (hand-woven longyis from Arakan
[Rakhine] and Inle Lake are especially prized), and are tied at the
side. Although sarong-type garments have been traditionally used
through Southeast and South Asia, Burma is one of the very few
countries where the majority of the people continue to wear them in
preference to Western-style skirts or trousers; in fact, the term “men
in trousers” is synonymous with the Tatmadaw.
Upper garments for Burmese men include the traditional jacket,
the tai bon, which is collarless and usually reddish-brown or tan in
color. For everyday wear, a Western-style shirt or T-shirt often suf-
fices. The traditional women’s blouse, the ingyi, is usually plain,
light-colored, and with long sleeves; Western-style blouses and
T-shirts are also popular. For formal occasions, men often wear the
gaung baung, a turbanlike head covering.
Despite the country’s traditional conservatism in dress, in part a
consequence of its isolation from the outside world, Western clothes
have become steadily more popular among the younger generation
since 1988, especially in large cities like Rangoon (Yangon) and
Mandalay. Models, movie stars, and rock groups are often the van-
guard in this trend. The popularity of Western-style dress, although it
is usually more modest than that found in neighboring countries, dis-
mays the older generation. In mid-2004, university authorities estab-
lished student dress codes, which mandate that students wear tradi-
tional longyi on campuses.

LOWER BURMA. A term first used by the British in the 19th century
to refer to those territories annexed following the First and Second
Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1826, 1852), in contrast to Upper
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LWIN, U • 275

Burma, which was ruled by the Konbaung Dynasty until the Third
Anglo-Burmese War (1885). Lower Burma was frequently also re-
ferred to as “Pegu,” the region’s most prominent city until Rangoon
(Yangon) became Burma’s colonial capital; after the 1852 war, it in-
cluded Arakan (Rakhine), Tenasserim (Tanintharyi), the Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River Delta, and most of what are now
Mon State and Pegu (Bago) Division. The terms Lower and Upper
Burma are still often used because the areas they denote retain a
strong regional distinctiveness. Historically, Lower Burma, home of
the Mons, has been a sea-girt, well-watered area where international
trade and rice cultivation have been highly developed since antiquity.
During the colonial period, it was characterized by ethnic diversity
and cosmopolitanism, including a large population of migrants from
India, in contrast to Upper Burma, which was more isolated and eth-
nically homogeneous. Both regions constituted Burma Proper, in
contrast to the Frontier Areas. See also ADMINISTRATION OF
BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

“LUKAUN LUTAW.” In the Burmese (Myanmar) language, “good

men before smart men,” referring to Ne Win’s preference for pro-
moting loyal cronies rather than talented persons to high positions, a
practice that has continued under the State Peace and Development
Council. Lukaun lutaw is considered a major reason for the poor
quality of economic planning during the Burma Socialist Pro-
gramme Party era, and why the economy remains in a state of cri-
sis today.

LWIN, U. A leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and

a member of its executive committee. Along with U Tin U, U Kyi
Maung, and U Aung Shwe, he was a veteran military officer, who
joined the Burma Independence Army in 1942 and was sent to un-
dergo military training in Japan. Between 1962 and 1988, he served
in various posts in the military and the government under Ne Win be-
fore retiring from the State Council in 1980. He joined the NLD at
its inception in 1988 and became its secretary in 1992; at present, he
plays the important role of spokesman for the party to foreign diplo-
mats and journalists at a time when its top leaders are again under
house arrest.
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276 • MAE SOT-MYAWADDY

–M–

MAE SOT-MYAWADDY. Mae Sot, located in Thailand’s Tak

Province, and Myawaddy, in Burma’s Karen (Kayin) State, are sep-
arated by the Moei River. The former is often known as “little
Burma” because as many as 100,000 Burmese refugees live and
work in and around the town, in factories, construction sites, and
brothels. Economic distress has brought them not only from nearby
Karen and Mon States, but also from central Burma. Abuse of
Burmese illegal workers in Mae Sot, including those in the sex in-
dustry, is regularly reported by international human rights organi-
zations. A Karen (Kayin) physician, Doctor Cynthia (Maung), has
established a major hospital and clinic at Mae Sot, which serves bor-
der area people.
Mae Sot and Myawaddy lie along one of the projected routes of
the 141,204-kilometer-long “Asian Highway” network; the high-
way is planned to run from the two towns through Pagan (Bagan)
in Mandalay Division to Tamu on the Indian border. In 1997, a
“Thailand–Burma Friendship Bridge” was completed, opening up
cross-border road traffic and greatly stimulating trade.

MAGWE (MAGWAY). The capital of Magwe (Magway) Division,

with a population estimated at 71,450 in 1996. It is located on the east
bank of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, astride river, rail, and
road connections linking Mandalay and Pagan (Bagan) in the north
with Prome (Pyay) and Rangoon (Yangon) to the south.

MAGWE (MAGWAY) DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14 states and di-

visions, with an area of 44,820 square kilometers (17,305 square
miles) and an estimated population in 2000 of 4.55 million (1983
census figure: 3,243,166). The divisional capital is Magwe (Mag-
way), and the division has five districts (Magwe, Minbu, Thayet,
Gangaw, and Pakkoku) and 25 townships. It is bounded on the north
by Sagaing Division, on the northwest by Chin State, on the south-
west by Arakan (Rakhine) State, on the south by Pegu (Bago) Di-
vision, and on the east by Mandalay Division.
Located in the Dry Zone, a “rain shadow” formed by the Arakan
(Rakhine) Yoma, Magwe Division receives scant rainfall compared
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MAHA MUNI BUDDHA IMAGE • 277

to areas to the south, although as much as half a million acres of crop-

land are devoted to the cultivation of rice. It is Burma’s largest pro-
ducer of millet and groundnuts (peanuts), and the country’s second
largest producer of sesame seeds, cotton, pulses, and beans. The land-
scape is rolling or flat and gives the impression of desert or savannah,
the horizon interrupted by clumps of shaggy sugar palms. Bisected
by the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, Magwe Division is a major
link in north–south water, road, and rail transportation.
Yenaungyaung (Yaynangyoung) and Chauk have been important
for the production of oil since before the British colonial era. Indus-
tries include petroleum refineries, rice mills, cotton mills, fertilizer
and cement plants, and factories for producing machinery and con-
sumer goods. Forestry is economically important, with reforestation
projects being implemented. Part of the Burman (Bamar) heartland
(Upper Burma), Magwe Division is rather homogeneous ethnically
and includes the town of Natmauk, the birthplace of independence
hero Aung San. Beikthano (the “City of Vishnu”), a Pyu site, is lo-
cated southeast of Magwe, and Sale (Salay), located southwest of
Chauk, contains interesting but little-investigated monuments dating
from the late Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty.

MAHA BANDULA (ca. 1780–1825). General who fought the British

during the First Anglo-Burmese War. Born near Monywa in what is
now Sagaing Division, he served both Kings Bodawpaya and Bagyi-
daw. A renowned commander, he was Bagyidaw’s viceroy in Assam
after the country was occupied by Burmese troops and planned to sub-
jugate not only the small states of northeastern India but also British
Bengal. Launching an attack on Bengal from Burmese-occupied
Arakan (Rakhine) when war was declared on March 5, 1824, Maha
Bandula was forced to withdraw to Lower Burma after a British ex-
peditionary force landed at Rangoon (Yangon) in May. He fought
pitched engagements against the British in and around Rangoon, but
in April 1825 he was killed during a battle at Danubyu, a stockade lo-
cated northwest of the city. Among Burmese, Maha Bandula’s name
is synonymous with impetuous courage.

MAHA MUNI BUDDHA IMAGE. The most important Buddha image

in Burma, located in a temple complex just south of the center of
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278 • MAHA THAMADA

Mandalay. Maha Muni means “great sage,” and according to legend,

a king of Arakan (Rakhine) commissioned it during the lifetime of
Gotama Buddha, who “breathed life upon it,” giving it special pow-
ers. Archeological evidence suggests it was one of the earliest repre-
sentations of Buddha, created in the early centuries CE. The Maha
Muni image served as the protector of the Arakan Kingdom until
King Bodawpaya brought it to his capital in central Burma follow-
ing his subjugation of Arakan in 1784–1785. The image is approxi-
mately four meters (13 feet) high and adorned with a crown in the
manner of a “universal monarch”; generations of devotees have cov-
ered it with so much gold leaf that its original shape has been dis-
torted. Only the Maha Muni image’s face is shiny and smooth.
Burmese people refer to it as paya, the word also used to designate a
pagoda, but which in the broadest sense means any person or object
worthy of devotion or veneration.

MAHA THAMADA (MAHA THAMMADA). In Indo-Buddhist and

Burmese tradition, the first king. At the beginning of the world
epoch, human beings were naturally good, like the inhabitants of the
Garden of Eden, but over time they became greedy, lustful, and cor-
rupted, and constantly quarreled. Recognizing this, they elected a
wise man to rule over them and make the laws. He was the “Great
Chosen One” (Maha Thamada). Scholars have compared this myth
with the Western concept of the social contract and James Madison’s
belief, expressed in The Federalist Papers, that “if men were angels,
no government would be necessary.” On an ideological level, it pro-
vided incumbent rulers with legitimacy, especially because Burmese
kings claimed descent from the Maha Thamada, although royal suc-
cession was dynastic or through force majeure rather than by elec-
tion. See also ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRECOLO-
NIAL BURMA.

MAHA VIZAYA PAGODA. Often called “Ne Win’s pagoda” because

of his role in sponsoring its construction, the Maha Vizaya (“Great
Victory”) Pagoda is located adjacent to the southern entrance to the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon). Dedicated in 1980 to
commemorate the establishment of a state-controlled Supreme
Sangha Council, it enshrines relics donated by the King of Nepal and
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MALAYSIA, RELATIONS WITH • 279

unlike most pagodas is hollow. Its inner chamber is lavishly deco-

rated and contains many symbols related to astrology.

MAHASI SAYADAW (1904–1982). A prominent member of the

Sangha, who perfected a method of meditation that has attracted large
numbers of Burmese and foreign practitioners. Born in the village of
Seikkhun near Shwebo in what is now Sagaing Division, he entered
the monkhood at the age of 6; at 12 was ordained as a novice (saman-
era); at 19, he decided to devote his life to religion and received ordi-
nation as a monk (bhikkhu). While at monasteries in Moulmein
(Mawlamyine) and Thaton, he carried out intensive study of the Pali
Canon in order to understand the principles of satipatthana-vipassana
(insight-awareness) meditation. He taught them to his first disciples in
his hometown of Seikkhun in 1938. During World War II, he re-
mained in Seikkhun (residing at the Mahasi Monastery, thus his title),
taught meditation techniques, and wrote a Manual of Vipassana Medi-
tation. In November 1949, Prime Minister U Nu invited him to teach
at the Sasana Yeiktha (Buddhist or Meditation Center) in Rangoon
(Yangon). He played a prominent role in the Sixth Great Buddhist
Council, convened by the prime minister between 1954 and 1956, and
headed missions to promote Theravada Buddhism and vipassana
meditation methods in Japan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Western
countries. Through his efforts and those of his disciples, meditation
centers based on his teachings were established not only in Burma but
also in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Aside from teaching, the
Mahasi Sayadaw was a prolific translator and writer on Buddhist sub-
jects. See also BA KHIN, U.

MALAYSIA, RELATIONS WITH. After the State Law and Order

Restoration Council seized power in September 1988, Malaysia’s
prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohammad, promoted close bilateral
relations, including substantial foreign investment (US$600 million
by the end of the 1990s) and trade, sponsorship of Burma’s success-
ful 1997 bid to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), and strong criticism of Western countries for allegedly in-
terfering in Burma’s and the Association’s internal affairs by oppos-
ing the country’s ASEAN membership. Critical of Western sanc-
tions, Mahathir argued that “constructive engagement” was more
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280 • MANDALAY

effective in encouraging democratic change. His close associate,

diplomat Razali Ismail (formally acting under the authority of United
Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan) traveled many times to Ran-
goon (Yangon) between 2000 and 2003 to promote dialogue between
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the military regime. However, the
“Black Friday” Incident of May 30, 2003, caused even the
Malaysian prime minister to criticize the regime for its intransigence.
In June 2005, on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Daw Suu Kyi,
Mahathir called on the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) to release her from house arrest. It is unclear how Malaysia’s
Burma policy has changed under his successor, Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi, but Anwar Ibrahim, a prominent opposition leader who was
jailed by Mahathir in 1998 but later released, has called for a tougher
policy toward the military regime.
One delicate issue in the bilateral relationship has been the SPDC’s
treatment of Burma’s Muslim minority, especially Rohingyas, an es-
timated 10,000 of whom have become refugees in Malaysia. See also
MUSLIMS IN BURMA; SINGAPORE, RELATIONS WITH.

MANDALAY. Capital of Mandalay Division and Burma’s second

largest city, located on the east bank of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River in Upper Burma. Its population was 533,000
at the time of the 1983 census, and at the beginning of the 21st cen-
tury was estimated at between 600,000 and 800,000. Between 1857
and 1885, it served as Burma’s last royal capital, having been con-
structed by order of King Mindon on a site that, according to legend,
had been favored by Gotama Buddha as the place where a great city
would be built 2,400 years after the founding of the Buddhist reli-
gion.
Mandalay’s most notable landmark is the moated wall that sur-
rounds the place where the Mandalay Palace stood until it was de-
stroyed during World War II. The city also contains important Bud-
dhist sites, such as Mandalay Hill, the Maha Muni Buddha Image,
and the Kuthodaw Pagoda. Because of its status as a former royal
capital, Mandalay is a center for traditional Burmese arts, culture,
and religious life.
Massive demonstrations occurred in Mandalay in 1988, and a
“strike committee” in which monks played a prominent role briefly
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MANDALAY DIVISION • 281

governed the city during Democracy Summer. In the summer of

1990, senior monks at Mandalay monasteries began a boycott of the
Tatmadaw, known as Overturning the Offering Bowl, which
spread to other parts of the country.
Economic liberalization has transformed the city since 1988. Both
the zeigyo, the old central market, and the colonial-era railway station
have been replaced by multistoried modern structures, several inter-
national class hotels have been built with foreign investment, and
Chinese businesspeople have bought up property in the city center,
causing land prices to rise, forcing many of the original Burmese res-
idents to relocate to outlying districts. A new $3.15 billion interna-
tional airport has been constructed south of the city by a Thai con-
struction company, with facilities to handle wide-bodied jets and a
capacity of three million passengers annually.
Mandalay’s economic ties with China, especially Yunnan
Province, strengthened after 1988, and a large though unspecified
number of Yunnanese and other Chinese have settled in the city, of-
ten purchasing Burmese identity cards. Chinese-owned businesses
are so numerous that local Burmese often call central Mandalay
“Chinatown.”

MANDALAY DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions,

with an area of 37,946 square kilometers (14,651 square miles) and
an estimated population in 2000 of 6.76 million (1983 census figure:
4,577,762). The divisional capital is Mandalay, which was Burma’s
last royal capital and is the country’s second largest city. Mandalay
Division comprises seven districts (Mandalay, Maymyo [Pyin-Oo-
Lwin], Kyaukse, Myingyan, Nyaung-U, Yamethin, and Meiktila)
and 31 townships. Located in the Dry Zone, a “rain shadow” formed
by the Arakan (Rakhine) Yoma, it receives scant rainfall compared
to areas to the south. To alleviate water shortages, the State Peace
and Development Council (SPDC) has built numerous dams and ir-
rigation networks. The land is generally low-lying, although the divi-
sion includes the foothills of the Shan Plateau (it is bordered by Shan
State to the east), the northern part of the Pegu (Bago) Yoma, and
isolated high points, such as Mandalay Hill and the volcanic Mount
Popa. The Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River runs along part of its
western border with Magwe (Magway) Division, and tributaries of
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282 • MANDALAY HILL

the Sittang (Sittoung) River flow south from the division. Elongated
in a north–south direction, its northern arm includes Mogok
(Mogoke), a famous center of ruby mining. Major crops include rice,
millet, groundnuts, oil seeds (sesame and sunflower), pulses, beans,
toddy (sugar) palm, and cotton. Mandalay Division has significant in-
dustry, including factories for the production of such consumer goods
as textiles, soft drinks, and canned goods, and the rail transport
workshops at Myitnge. Since the 1990s, industrial estates have been
established in Mandalay city. Forestry is also economically impor-
tant, and the town of Kyaukpadaung is a hub for highway transporta-
tion.
Located in the Burman (Bamar) heartland (Upper Burma),
Mandalay Division is the site of many of the country’s old royal cap-
itals: Mandalay, Pagan (Bagan) in Nyaung-U District, Ava (Inwa),
and Amarapura. Even after the British shifted the center of political
and economic power to Rangoon (Yangon), these towns have re-
mained important as places where traditional art, culture, and man-
ners are preserved. For example, Amarapura is a center for traditional
silk weaving, and marble Buddha images are carved at Sagyin out-
side of Mandalay. Most of the population are Burmans, though there
are smaller numbers of Shans and other indigenous ethnic minorities,
and an undetermined (though probably large) population of migrants
from the People’s Republic of China. In 2005, the SPDC announced
that a new national capital would be built at Pyinmana, in the south-
ern part of Mandalay Division, and relocation of personnel com-
menced in November of that year.

MANDALAY HILL. Rising 236 meters above Mandalay to the north-

east of Mandalay Palace, the hill is associated with a legend in
which Gotama Buddha, standing at the summit, prophesied that a
great city would be built on the plain below, 24 centuries after the es-
tablishment of Buddhism. A standing Buddha image, pointing to-
ward the city, represents this episode (Mandalay was in fact estab-
lished by King Mindon as his capital, construction being completed
in 1857). A number of Buddhist sites are on the hill, the construction
of which was sponsored by a prominent hermit, U Khanti. Fighting
between Allied and Japanese forces occurred on Mandalay Hill in
1945.
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MANERPLAW • 283

MANDALAY PALACE. Completed by King Mindon in 1857, the

Mandalay Palace’s layout was similar to that of the previous royal
residence at Amarapura. It was surrounded by a moat and an eight-
meter-(26-foot)-high square wall made of brick, each side of which
is about two kilometers long. Twelve gates piercing the wall are
topped with wooden tiered-roof structures or spires ( pyatthat in the
Burmese [Myanmar] language). The wall and moat remain intact
today. The interior buildings were made of teak, including the royal
palace itself, the hall where the Hluttaw met, and religious buildings.
The palace design reflected the Indo-Buddhist concept that the king’s
abode was the “center of the cosmos,” and a seven-tiered pyatthat
was built over the central throne room, representing Mount Meru.
During Mindon’s reign, as many as 5,000 persons lived within the
palace precincts.
Following the Third Anglo-Burmese War, the British took over
the palace, renaming it Fort Dufferin. The queen’s reception room
was used for a time as a British social club. During World War II,
Japanese forces made it their headquarters, and most of the build-
ings were burned down in Allied bombings in 1945. The State Law
and Order Restoration Council built reproductions of some of
them in the 1990s and cleaned up the moat, a massive task, using
forced labor.

MANERPLAW. Meaning “Field of Victory,” Manerplaw was estab-

lished as the headquarters of the Karen National Union (KNU) and
its armed force, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), in
1975. It was located in what seemed to be an impregnable position:
To the east was the Moei River, which formed the border with Thai-
land, while to the west was the Salween (Thanlwin) River, and to
the south and west, the Dawna Range. Manerplaw became the head-
quarters of the National Democratic Front (NDF), an alliance of non-
communist ethnic minority armed groups, in 1976, and of the Dem-
ocratic Alliance of Burma in 1988. It was also the site where the
National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma was pro-
claimed in December 1990.
Given its location just inside the Burmese border and its status as
the “capital” of the ethnic minority and Burman (Bamar) opposi-
tion, Manerplaw became the objective of a massive offensive by the
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284 • MANIPUR

Tatmadaw in 1992; it failed but left the KNLA gravely weakened. A

second offensive in 1995, designated Operation Pyi Zanh (“Hero of
the People”), captured Manerplaw on January 27. A second major
Karen base at Kawmoorah, 80 kilometers southeast of Manerplaw,
fell on February 21. Major factors in the operation’s success were the
Tatmadaw’s superior intelligence and the active assistance of the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which had defected
from the KNU in December 1994.

MANIPUR. Formerly an independent kingdom, located in what is now

Manipur State, India, to the west of Burma’s Chin State. It was some-
times a vassal state of Burma, but in the mid-18th century Manipuri
cavalry staged crippling raids into Upper Burma, almost capturing
Ava (Inwa) in 1749. A decade later, Alaungpaya subjugated it; there-
after, Manipuri Brahmin practitioners of astrology, taken prisoner by
the king, served in the Burmese palace. During the First Anglo-
Burmese War, it fell under British control. Manipur was the site of the
Imphal Campaign, one of the major battles of World War II.

MANUHA TEMPLE. Buddhist monument at Pagan (Bagan), built

around 1059 by Manuha, the Mon king of Thaton who was taken
captive by Anawrahta, founder of the Pagan Dynasty. Often con-
sidered “Burma’s first political prisoner,” Manuha was treated disre-
spectfully by his captor but allowed to build the temple, the design of
which allegedly shows his displeasure at losing his freedom. The
building is small and rather unimpressive, and three seated and one
reclining Buddha images are too large for the narrow, claustrophobic
chambers in which they are housed, where they look distinctly un-
comfortable. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; PAGAN
DYNASTY.

MARTABAN (MOTTAMA). Located at the mouth of the Salween

(Thanlwin) River across from Moulmein (Mawlamyine) in Mon
State, fronting the Gulf of Martaban, Martaban is the site of a port
and Mon kingdom, established by Wareru in the late thirteenth cen-
tury. The Portuguese briefly established a presence there in the six-
teenth century.
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MASS MEDIA IN BURMA • 285

MASS MEDIA IN BURMA. Mass media include both print (newspa-

pers and magazines) and broadcast (radio and television) outlets for
information and entertainment. Under British rule, Burma had a num-
ber of vernacular newspapers, of which the most notable were
Thuriya (The Sun) and Myanma Alin (New Light of Myanmar). Dur-
ing the parliamentary period (1948–1962), there were as many as 56
different newspapers, published not only in the Burmese (Myan-
mar) language, but also in the English, Chinese, and Indian lan-
guages. After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in
March 1962, most of these were closed down, and the Press
Scrutiny Board (PSB), which remains operative today, imposed dra-
conian censorship on the few publications that were allowed to con-
tinue. In 1966, the regime issued a decree stating that newspapers
could be published only in Burmese and English.
The Ne Win regime’s principal press organ was the Loketha Pyithu
Nezin (Working People’s Daily), which was published in both lan-
guages, a newspaper that can be compared to the Renmin Ribao (Peo-
ple’s Daily) in Mao Zedong–era China for its heavy propagandistic
content. Radio and television (the latter introduced to Burma in 1980)
were under the control of the state-owned Burma Broadcasting Ser-
vice (BBS).
During 1988, foreign radio stations, such as the Voice of Amer-
ica, All India Radio, and especially the British Broadcasting Cor-
poration (BBC) played an indispensable role in providing Burmese
listeners with credible information at a time when the state media
tried to conceal events, such as the White Bridge Incident. After
coming to power in September 1988, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) accused these stations of serving
as instruments of neocolonial powers wishing to undermine na-
tional unity, as expressed in a regime publication, Sky Full of Lies.
In the early 21st century, the BBC, Radio Free Asia, and the Voice
of Democratic Burma remain important sources of information for
listeners inside the country, and some observers credit their impact
on Burmese people’s awareness of current events as more crucial
than that of information technology, such as the Internet, which
the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) monitors and
controls tightly.
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286 • MASS MEDIA IN BURMA

The SLORC’s postsocialist “open economy” policies helped foster

a more diverse though still compliant media scene in the 1990s. Re-
named Myanma Alin (New Light of Myanmar) in 1993, the Working
People’s Daily remains the official mouthpiece, controlled by the
Ministry of Information. A handful of other newspapers are allowed
to publish, including Kyemon (Mirror Daily), City News, and Yadan-
abon. In 2000, the Myanmar Times and Business Review was inaugu-
rated; this weekly, published both in English and Burmese and edited
by an Australian journalist, has an appealing format and interesting
stories, although it was reportedly established with the assistance of
Military Intelligence and does not publish articles critical of the
SPDC. There reportedly were plans to make the Myanmar Times a
daily paper, but its future was uncertain after Khin Nyunt’s purge in
October 2004.
In recent years, some 50 private weekly and monthly magazines have
been established, among them “lifestyle” and business magazines that
cater to affluent urban audiences who are influenced by global trends.
A streetside newsstand in Rangoon (Yangon) might sell Eleven
(sports), Dana, and Myanmar Dana (business), Image and Idea
(ladies’ fashion magazines), and even Golf. Like the Myanmar Times,
they are glossy; Image, for example, looks like a Burmese-language
version of Cosmopolitan, though more modest in content. A reader
can even purchase News Update, which deals with world affairs
(though apparently not relating to Burmese politics). All these publi-
cations remain subject to heavy censorship by the PSB. When offi-
cials find offending articles, they order them inked over or torn out of
the magazines.
Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV), the former BBS, man-
ages several TV channels, including one that broadcasts in English,
while the Tatmadaw has its own channel, Myawaddy TV. Programs
focus on official visits by SPDC leaders to different parts of the coun-
try or overseas and are so dull that viewers look forward to seeing the
commercials, which feature popular film stars or models. Imported
Chinese and South Korean television dramas also have many view-
ers. Those tired of domestic fare can, if they can afford it, place a
satellite dish on the roof of their residence, though this is technically
illegal without a special permit from the government. The Yangon
City Development Committee has established a new radio station,
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MAUNG AYE, GENERAL • 287

City FM, which is popular with younger people in Rangoon (Yan-

gon). Despite the growing diversity of Burma’s media, the people re-
main starved for reliable news. Within the relatively safe confines of
their homes, listening to the BBC Burmese Service has become a val-
ued daily routine. See also MOTION PICTURES IN BURMA.

MASS ORGANIZATIONS, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME

PARTY ERA (1962–1988). In the one-party state that evolved after
the Burma Socialist Programme Party was established by Ne Win
in 1962, “mass and class organizations” played a role in “agitating
and organizing the people into appreciating and accepting the Party’s
policies and decisions and to induce wide mass participation in the
national development projects” (Working People’s Daily, December
20, 1982). These included youth-oriented groups aimed at different
ages (Lanzin, Shaysaung, and Teza Youths), Workers’ Asiayone
(Workers’ Associations), Peasants’ Asiayone (Peasants’ Associa-
tions), and groups of war veterans and “literary workers.” In the case
of the larger groups, members numbered in the millions (7.8 million
in the Peasants’ Associations in 1982), but the rapid collapse of these
mass organizations following the prodemocracy demonstrations of
1988 indicates that, at best, the population regarded them with indif-
ference. The post-1988 equivalent is the Union Solidarity and De-
velopment Association, which also has many millions of members.

MAUNG AYE, GENERAL (1940– ). Vice chairman of the State

Peace and Development Council (SPDC), he graduated with the
first class of the Defence Services Academy in 1959. During the
1980s, he served as head of Regional Military Commands and be-
came deputy commander in chief of the Tatmadaw in 1993 and vice
chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council in
1994, holding the same position under the SPDC when it was estab-
lished in 1997. Compared to the relatively “moderate” Khin Nyunt,
he is considered a hard-liner, but in the opening years of the 21st cen-
tury, he appeared to be losing influence because he was not especially
close to SPDC Chairman Than Shwe. It is unclear whether the purge
of Khin Nyunt in October 2004 has resulted in an enhancement of his
power and influence within the junta. See also STATE PEACE AND
DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL, INTERNAL DYNAMICS.
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288 • MAUNG MAUNG, DR.

MAUNG MAUNG, DR. (1924–1994). The only intellectual known

to have been close to General Ne Win during his long military and
political career, Dr. Maung Maung served briefly in 1988 as chair-
man of the Burma Socialist Programme Party and president of
Burma. He was in the Burma Defence Army/Burma National
Army during World War II. After the war, he studied at Mandalay
College and Rangoon (Yangon) University. He pursued his stud-
ies abroad at Lincoln’s Inn, London, the University of Utrecht, and
Yale University, earning doctorates at the latter two institutions. In
the mid-1950s, he established the Guardian magazine and news-
paper. After Ne Win’s coup d’état in March 1962, Dr. Maung
Maung was appointed Chief Justice and was one of the main au-
thors of the Constitution of 1974. After Sein Lwin’s resignation
as head of the party and state in the face of popular indignation,
Maung Maung assumed these posts, on August 19, 1988. He en-
joyed little credibility among the populace, however, being nick-
named “the Puppet.” On September 10, he announced to the sec-
ond BSPP Extraordinary Congress that multiparty democratic
elections would be held in the near future. After the State Law and
Order Restoration Council assumed power on September 18, he
retired from public life.
Dr. Maung Maung wrote a number of books on Burmese history
and law, including Burma and General Ne Win and The 1988 Upris-
ing in Burma, which are well-written apologies for Ne Win and
his regime. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER; FOUR EIGHTS
MOVEMENT.

MAUNG PHONE MAW (1965–1988). Student at Rangoon (Yan-

gon) Institute of Technology who was shot and killed by the Riot
Police (Lon Htein) during a demonstration on March 13, 1988, fol-
lowing the Tea Shop Incident. An official Inquiry Commission re-
ported in May 1988 that he and another student (Soe Naing) died of
multiple gunshot wounds. As the first student victim of 1988, he has
been compared to Bo Aung Gyaw, a Rangoon (Yangon) University
student killed by British colonial police in December 1938. The an-
niversary of his death on March 13 is commemorated by opposition-
ists as “Burma Human Rights Day.” See also MIN KO NAING.
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MEIKTILA • 289

MAYMYO (PYIN OO LWIN, PYIN U LWIN). Located in Man-

dalay Division on the edge of the Shan Plateau, Maymyo, named af-
ter a British officer who participated in the Pacification of Burma,
was the summer capital of the British governor and other officials
during the colonial period and was also popular with other Europeans
seeking respite from the hot weather. At an elevation of over 1,000
meters (3,250 feet), it is noted for its fresh, cool air, pine trees, straw-
berries, and old buildings designed to remind Europeans of “home,”
such as the Candacraig Hotel. It is also the location of the Defence
Services Academy and a new university for Tatmadaw personnel
specializing in technology. There are large populations of Indians and
Nepali Gurkhas, whose forebears came during the colonial period.
See also KALAW.

MEDITATION. Meditation is central to the serious practice of Bud-

dhism; Gotama Buddha attributed his enlightenment to meditation
techniques. Simply described, it involves two stages: the achievement
of tranquility (samatha) through proper concentration, calming the
mind’s restlessness; and the achievement of insight (vipassana),
through which a person can fully comprehend the truths of Buddhism,
including impermanence and non-self (anatta). Burmese Buddhists be-
lieve that their country is home to advanced and scripturally authentic
meditation techniques. After World War II, Burmese meditation teach-
ers, especially the Mahasi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin, attracted disci-
ples both from inside and outside the country and established medita-
tion centers that continue to be popular today. Many of Burma’s
political leaders, such as Prime Minister U Nu, practiced meditation;
during her term of house arrest from 1989 to 1995, Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi also meditated, though without benefit of a teacher.

MEIKTILA. A city in Mandalay Division, with a population estimated

at 127,837 in 1996. Known for its lake and a large air force (Tat-
madaw lei) base, its location at the intersection of the east-west Bagan-
Taunggyi road and the north-south Rangoon (Yangon)-Mandalay
road makes it an important commercial center in Upper Burma. It was
the site of a major battle between Allied and Japanese forces during
World War II.
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290 • MEKONG RIVER

MEKONG RIVER. The largest river system in Southeast Asia, with a

length of 4,200 kilometers, the Mekong rises in southwestern China
(Tibet) and flows through or along the borders of all mainland South-
east Asian countries: Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and
Burma. It forms Burma’s eastern border with Laos. Comprehensive
economic development plans for the Greater Mekong Subregion
promoted by the Asian Development Bank include Burma, and am-
bitious projects to facilitate riverine communications and integrate
the economies of southwestern China and the five Southeast Asian
countries will have a major impact on what are now some of Burma’s
remotest areas in eastern Shan State.

MERGUI (MYEIK, BEIK). Fronting the Andaman Sea, Mergui is lo-

cated in south-central Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division and had
an estimated population of 100,000 in 1996. Because of its good har-
bor, the town has had a long history as a trade center, serving the
northeastern littoral of the Indian Ocean. For much of this time, it was
under the control of Siam rather than Burma. During the seventeenth
century. an Englishman, Samuel White, served as its harbormaster,
and the tomb of his wife Mary, who died in 1682, can still be seen.
His adventures are described in a book by Maurice Collis, Siamese
White. Since 1988, Mergui, known for its attractive traditional and
colonial architecture, has experienced significant economic growth
through the export of seafood products to Thailand. See also MER-
GUI ARCHIPELAGO.

MERGUI (MYEIK, BEIK) ARCHIPELAGO. An island group

found along the eastern shore of the Andaman Sea, which, according
to British colonial geographers, contains 804 islands, extending
roughly from Mergui (Myeik, Beik) in Tenasserim (Tanintharyi)
Division in the north to the Thai–Burma border (Kawthaung, Victo-
ria Point) in the south. The largest island is King Island (Kadan
Kyun), opposite Mergui, and others include St. Matthew, Domel, and
Kisseraing Islands. The archipelago is home to the Moken, “Sea
Gypsies.” Although ecotourism taking advantage of the beautiful ma-
rine environment is being developed, the islands remain largely iso-
lated from the outside world. Some have limestone caves where
swiftlets build their nests, which are gathered and used for “bird’s
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MILITARY INTELLIGENCE • 291

nest soup,” a Chinese delicacy that can fetch high prices in Hong
Kong and Singapore. Pearls are found in offshore waters; the once-
abundant marine life has been over-fished in recent years, often by
fishermen using dynamite.

MERRILL’S MARAUDERS (5307 COMPOSITE UNIT). Infor-

mally named for their commander, Brigadier General Frank D. Mer-
rill, this World War II American unit numbering 2,997 officers and
men was organized as a counterpart to Brigadier Orde Wingate’s
Chindits. Under the command of General Joseph Stilwell, its objec-
tives were to recapture northern Burma from the Japanese and clear
the way for completion of the Ledo Road. In an operation code-
named “Galahad,” the Marauders marched overland from northeast-
ern India into the Hukawng Valley (in present-day Kachin State) in
February 1944, fought tenaciously against Japanese units alongside
the 22d and 38th Chinese Divisions, and captured the vital airstrip at
Myitkyina in May. Allied control of the airfield enabled them to fly
more than 14,000 supply flights from India to China between May
and October 1944. But the Japanese counterattacked, and the town of
Myitkyina did not fall to the Allies until August. That same month,
the Marauders, having suffered terrible casualties, were demobilized.
See also BURMA ROAD.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE (MI). The State Peace and Develop-

ment Council (SPDC) has operated an extensive military intelligence
apparatus that not only provided the Tatmadaw (armed forces) with re-
liable information on conventional national security matters—the task
of military intelligence agencies in most countries—but also monitored
the civilian population closely for signs of dissent, kept an eye on the
Tatmadaw’s own rank and file to detect disloyal elements, and carried
out public relations activities in foreign countries to make the SPDC
regime more acceptable in the eyes of the international community.
Since 1989, it has also played a central role in negotiating cease-fires
between the central government and ethnic minority armed groups.
Burma’s most powerful intelligence agency was the Directorate of De-
fense Services Intelligence (DDSI), also known as the Military Intel-
ligence Service (MIS), which was formally under the authority of the
National Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Defence.
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292 • MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Most ordinary Burmese know Military Intelligence as “MI.” Its

network of informers in tea shops, on college campuses, and in local
neighborhoods has been a part of daily life for many years. Foreign
visitors have sometimes been shadowed by MI agents. Burmese liv-
ing abroad have also been aware that MI agents provocateurs may be
operating in their midst. MI has been widely criticized by interna-
tional human rights organizations for some of the SPDC’s worst
abuses, including the torture and killing of detainees at interrogation
centers, such as the DDSI’s Ye Kyi Aing facility north of Rangoon
(Yangon).
When Burma became independent in 1948, Military Intelligence
units were established to gather information on communist and eth-
nic minority insurgents. However, they were poorly organized and
coordinated. During the Caretaker Government and Burma So-
cialist Programme Party (BSPP) periods (1958–1960, 1962–1988),
MI was extensively reorganized, rationalized, and expanded, and be-
came deeply involved in surveillance of the general population. In-
formers were recruited, especially among university students, using
threats or bribes, a practice that continues today. In the aftermath of
the U Thant Incident in 1974 and the massive popular demonstra-
tions of 1988, MI informers helped put thousands of dissidents in jail.
Because MI officers were generally better educated than their
counterparts in the regular army and operated with considerable au-
tonomy, Ne Win perceived them as a threat to his own power base
and ordered the purge of the powerful “MI” Tin Oo in mid-1983.
That same year, Military Intelligence was reorganized to ensure
tighter State Council and regular army control. This left the intelli-
gence apparatus in some disarray, apparently making it possible for
agents from North Korea to carry out a terrorist bombing of the
Martyrs’ Monument during a state visit of the South Korean cabinet
on October 9, 1983, the Rangoon Incident. Ne Win charged Colonel
Khin Nyunt with the task of rebuilding the MI apparatus, and he be-
came its head in 1984.
During 1988, Khin Nyunt and his fellow intelligence officers seri-
ously misread the depth of popular dissatisfaction, as demonstrated
by the BSPP regime’s inept and heavy-handed response to the
demonstrations of Democracy Summer. A second intelligence fail-
ure was the landslide victory of the National League for Democracy
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MILITARY INTELLIGENCE • 293

in the General Election of May 27, 1990. However, after the State
Law and Order Restoration Council was established in September
1988, MI underwent a major expansion in terms of manpower, equip-
ment, and new technology (much of which was obtained from China,
Singapore, and other countries). After 1992, its command structure
operated independently of the regular Tatmadaw. At the beginning of
the 21st century, it had the capability to carry out sophisticated
HUMINT (Human Intelligence, e.g., agents, informers), SIGINT
(Signals Intelligence, monitoring communications), and even IMINT
([overhead] Imagery Intelligence, using aircraft) operations against
domestic and foreign targets.
Because the SLORC/SPDC enjoys little or no popular support,
Military Intelligence became indispensable for keeping it in power.
Not only the regime’s “eyes and ears” but also its “brains,” it in-
formed the top junta leadership, who are largely uneducated and ig-
norant of the outside world, about the latest domestic and interna-
tional developments, carrying out a function that in other political
systems would be done by not only intelligence agencies but also po-
litical analysts, agencies of the executive and legislative branches of
government, and independent mass media. However, the efficiency
of its operations was hampered by the wide range of its responsibili-
ties and the limited resources available to it.
On October 18, 2004, MI commander Khin Nyunt was arrested on
charges of corruption and attempting to split the Tatmadaw. His sud-
den, though not entirely unexpected, fall from power left the intelli-
gence apparatus in disarray because as many as 2,000 of his subordi-
nates were also arrested or forced into retirement. The purge was
motivated by intra-junta factional rivalries, and Khin Nyunt’s rivals,
including Generals Maung Aye and Soe Win, with the backing of
Senior General Than Shwe, apparently believed Khin Nyunt was
building a “junta within the junta,” which endangered their own
power base. One result of the dismantling of the MI apparatus was an
amnesty extended to thousands of prisoners, but only a handful of
these were political prisoners, and there was no evidence that the
SPDC was softening its attitude toward Aung San Suu Kyi and her
supporters.
On May 7, 2005, three bomb blasts at crowded shopping centers in
Rangoon killed, according to official reports, 11 people, although the
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294 • MILITARY INTELLIGENCE (MI), ORGANIZATION OF

actual figure may have been much higher. In a sense, this was history
repeating itself, for, like the October 1983 Rangoon Incident, it oc-
curred at a time when the Military Intelligence apparatus was in dis-
array following its leader’s arrest. However, unlike the 1983 bomb-
ings, it was unclear who the perpetrators were. The regime blamed
foreign-based opposition groups, but some observers speculated that
elements within the military, perhaps reacting to the purge of Khin
Nyunt and his subordinates, may have been responsible. See also DI-
RECTORATE OF DEFENSE SERVICES INTELLIGENCE; MILI-
TARY INTELLIGENCE, ORGANIZATION OF; NATIONAL IN-
TELLIGENCE BUREAU; OFFICE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE (MI), ORGANIZATION OF. The or-

ganizational structure of Military Intelligence was established dur-
ing the Burma Socialist Programme Party period (1962–1988),
with some modifications after the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council came to power in September 1988. Stated briefly, the
modifications restored much of the autonomy enjoyed by Military In-
telligence agencies before the purge of “MI” Tin Oo in 1983. Before
the purge of MI commander Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt in Oc-
tober 2004, the National Intelligence Bureau, which was directly
responsible to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC),
oversaw all intelligence activities, including not only the Directorate
of Defense Services Intelligence (DDSI, also known as the Military
Intelligence Service, MIS), which was under the authority of the
Ministry of Defence, but also intelligence agencies attached to the
Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, National Planning and
Economic Development, and Immigration and Population. However,
the DDSI was the most powerful intelligence organ, carrying out the
SPDC’s most important information-gathering activities and exercis-
ing control over the civilian intelligence agencies. Its director, Khin
Nyunt, was concurrently director general of the National Intelligence
Bureau and (until 2003) Secretary-1 of the SPDC. Following his
2004 ouster, the National Intelligence Bureau was abolished.
All intelligence units attached to the three services of the Tat-
madaw were subordinate to the DDSI, which also commanded its
own hierarchy of special units (Military Intelligence companies) on
the regional level. The number of these special units increased from
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MIN KO NAING • 295

14 in 1989 to approximately 40 by 2000. They were concentrated in

urban areas and in border regions adjacent to China, India, and
Bangladesh. After 1992, they reported directly to the DDSI head-
quarters, rather than through the regular Tatmadaw chain of com-
mand. Some DDSI personnel were responsible for surveillance of the
Tatmadaw rank and file, which, along with its independence from the
regular chain of command, made the DDSI a focus of strong resent-
ment on the part of the regular military.
In the mid-1990s, the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS) was es-
tablished as a “think tank,” with Khin Nyunt as its head. Although the
DDSI’s headquarters had been located in the heavily guarded De-
fence Services Compound in central Rangoon (Yangon), it report-
edly moved to a new location at Eight Mile Junction north of Inya
Lake. DDSI had working relations with the governments of a num-
ber of SPDC-friendly countries, including China, Singapore, and
possibly Israel. Since Khin Nyunt’s purge, however, the MI appara-
tus has been in disarray, and it is unclear what will replace it as the
“eyes and ears” of the SPDC.

MIN BIN, KING (r. 1531–1553). Also known as Man Pa, ruler of
Arakan (Rakhine), whose reign witnessed the country’s emergence
as a major power. He established close ties with the Portuguese and
was able to take advantage of their superior shipbuilding techniques
and firearms to fortify his capital, Mrauk-U, and build a strong navy
that conducted both trade and piracy in the Bay of Bengal. Por-
tuguese served as officers in Min Bin’s army, which consisted of mer-
cenaries from a number of European and Asian countries. Min Bin
not only imposed Arakanese control over eastern Bengal, including
the port of Chittagong, but also successfully repulsed an invasion by
the Burman King Tabinshwehti in 1546–1547. He was the builder of
one of Arakan’s most important Buddhist monuments, the Shit-
thaung (Sittaung) temple.

MIN KO NAING (1962– ). Nom de guerre of Paw Oo Htun, the most

prominent student leader of the 1988 prodemocracy movement. It
means “conqueror of kings.” A zoology student at Rangoon (Yan-
gon) University, he expressed his opposition to the government of
Ne Win in the mid-1980s by organizing a than gyat or song-and-skit
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296 • MIN MAHAGIRI

troupe during Thingyan, which satirized the regime and its corrupt
practices. He gave a speech at the university’s Main Campus on
March 16, 1988, and participated in the demonstration that ended
with the White Bridge Incident. A founder of the All Burma Fed-
eration of Student Unions (ABFSU), he issued the proclamation an-
nouncing the Four Eights Movement, a general strike with the aim
of forcing the resignation of Sein Lwin as president and chairman of
the Burma Socialist Programme Party. Preferring to do political
work in the capital rather than fleeing to the border after the State
Law and Order Restoration Council seized power, Min Ko Naing
was arrested on March 23, 1989, and sentenced to 20 years for sub-
version. Kept at Insein Jail under extremely harsh conditions, in-
cluding torture and solitary confinement, he was later transferred to
the prison in Sittwe (Sittway), Arakan (Rakhine) State. Although
his sentence was reduced to ten years in 1993, he remained in con-
finement, suffering poor health, until released following an amnesty
that was proclaimed after the purge of Lieutenant General Khin
Nyunt in October 2004. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

MIN MAHAGIRI. Known as the “Lord of the Great Mountain,” he is

one of the principal gods included in the pantheon of Thirty-seven
Nats established by King Anawrahta. According to legend, he was
a blacksmith of great strength, whose powers were feared by the king
of Tagaung. The king married the blacksmith’s beautiful sister and
then treacherously invited the brother to come to his court. The black-
smith was bound to a tree and burned to death. His sister, who is
known as Taunggyi Shin, or more popularly “Lady Golden Face,”
threw herself on the pyre and perished with her brother. Their images
are enshrined at Mount Popa. Min Mahagiri also serves as the nat
protector of households, whose presence is symbolized by an un-
husked coconut hung from a high pillar, to which family members
give daily offerings.

MINAMI KIKAN (MINAMI ORGAN). Established on February 1,

1941, by the Imperial General Headquarters of the Japanese Army,
the Minami Kikan was a clandestine organization designed to pro-
mote Japanese war aims in Burma. Named for its head, Colonel
Suzuki Keiji (who collected information and contacts in Burma un-
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MINDON, KING • 297

der the name “Minami Masuyo”; minami also means “south” in

Japanese), it operated for the most part in Thailand, using a front or-
ganization, the “Southeast Asia Industrial Investigation Association,”
as a cover for its activities. Its headquarters were in Bangkok, and
branches were located at Kachanaburi, Ranong, Chiang Mai, and Ra-
heng. The Minami Kikan recruited the Thirty Comrades; arranged
their secret departure from Burma; gave them military training at a
facility, the “Sanya Peasants’ Training Center,” on Hainan island,
China; and provided arms and logistical support for the Burma In-
dependence Army, which was formally established on December
28, 1941, in Bangkok.
The Minami Kikan originally included both Japanese army and
navy officers, but navy resentment of Colonel Suzuki’s often high-
handed manner led to their withdrawal from the organization. After
Suzuki was transferred from Burma back to Japan in June 1942, the
Minami Kikan became inoperative. After the war, members of the
Minami Kikan maintained contact with Burmese ruling circles. In
1981, eight of them received decorations, the “Order of Aung San”
(Aung San Tagun), from President Ne Win. See also AUNG SAN;
JAPANESE OCCUPATION.

MINDON, KING (r. 1853–1878). Tenth and penultimate monarch of

the Konbaung Dynasty, he seized the throne after his half brother,
Pagan Min (r. 1846–1853), suffered the loss of Lower Burma in
the Second Anglo-Burmese War. Like his contemporary, King
Mongkut of Siam (Thailand), he spent most of his adult life as a
member of the Sangha before becoming king, promoted limited re-
forms of his realm, and pursued amicable relations with the British,
who threatened Burma’s independence as never before. He moved
the royal capital from Amarapura to a new city, Mandalay, build-
ing an extensive palace compound at the foot of Mandalay Hill.
With the support of his most influential minister, the Kinwun
Mingyi, he undertook modernization of the civil service, tax sys-
tem, and currency. One of his sons, the Mekkara Prince, embarked
on a modest program of industrialization, setting up textile and
other factories. Telegraph lines were strung between his kingdom
and British Burma. A devout Buddhist, he convened the Fifth
Great Buddhist Council in 1871, which produced an authoritative
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298 • MINERAL RESOURCES

version of the Tipitaka, or scriptures. These were engraved on

stone stelae and placed in the Kuthodaw Pagoda.
Mindon failed to persuade the British to return Lower Burma to him,
and they barred him from coming to Rangoon (Yangon) to donate a
hti to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in 1871, because that might be inter-
preted as acknowledging his continued authority in British-occupied
territory. The loss of Lower Burma left his kingdom landlocked, cut-
ting Mindon off from effective communications with the other Euro-
pean powers. The British regarded him as equivalent to the Indian ma-
harajas, a tributary rather than the sovereign of an independent state;
he was never allowed to negotiate directly with the government in Lon-
don (as Siam’s Mongkut did), but only with the Indian Viceroy. British
insistence on “free trade” led to the abolition of old royal monopolies,
for example, on teak. Anglo-French rivalry, growing British economic
interests in Upper Burma, and chronic unrest both in central Burma
and ethnic minority areas doomed his efforts to preserve his country’s
independence.
Although the “shoe question” increased Anglo-Burmese tensions,
Mindon succeeded in keeping the peace even though rumors of
French interests in Burma were rife. Because a coup d’état attempt in
1866 resulted in the assassination of the crown prince, there was a
succession struggle following Mindon’s death on October 1, 1878
that resulted in a less able monarch, Thibaw, ascending the throne.
See also THIRD ANGLO-BURMESE WAR.

MINERAL RESOURCES. The production and export of non-

hydrocarbon minerals has been important to the Burmese economy
since precolonial times, though production after the British colo-
nial era declined because of insurgency in mining areas, nation-
alization, and underinvestment. Significant deposits of tin and
tungsten (wolfram) extend from Shan State to Tenasserim
(Tanintharyi) Division, the Mawchi mine in Kayah State having
once been the world’s largest source of tungsten. Also, the Namtu
(Bawdwin) mine in Shan State was one of the world’s richest pro-
ducers of lead, silver, copper, and zinc. High-quality jade, much
prized in China, is produced at Hpakant in Kachin State. Mogok,
northeast of Mandalay, is famed as the source of sapphires and
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MINLAUNG • 299

famed “pigeon blood” rubies. Since 1988 and the end of the social-
ist system, there has been significant foreign investment in the min-
ing sector. See also GEMSTONES; OIL AND NATURAL GAS.

MINGALADON (TOWNSHIP). Located in northern Rangoon (Yan-

gon), Mingaladon Township is the site of Rangoon’s international
airport, the country’s largest (in terms of traffic). There are also ex-
tensive Tatmadaw installations, so that a significant percentage of
the township’s population is military personnel. Both the airport and
the military “cantonments” date back to the British colonial period.

MINGUN. A town on the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, upriver

from Mandalay, best known for the Mingun Pagoda, built by King
Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819). Intended to be the world’s tallest
pagoda, with a height of 170 meters (553 feet), its construction,
which involved thousands of slaves and prisoners of war, was halted
at Bodawpaya’s death in 1819, and an earthquake damaged it in
1838. The ruins, standing 50 meters (163 feet) high, are still impres-
sive. A 90-ton bronze bell, commissioned by Bodawpaya in 1808, is
the largest undamaged bell in the world.

MINKYINYO, KING (r. 1486–1531). Founder and first monarch of

the Toungoo (Taungoo) Dynasty. His small state, Toungoo (Taun-
goo), located in the valley of the Sittang (Sittoung) River, attracted
many Burman chiefs following the occupation of Ava (Inwa) by the
Shans in 1527. He planned to conquer the Mon state of Han-
thawaddy (modern-day Pegu [Bago]) in Lower Burma, but died in
1531; his son, Tabinshwehti, completed the task. See also BAYIN-
NAUNG.

MINLAUNG. In the Burmese (Myanmar) language, an “imminent

king,” a person destined (from the perspective of Buddhism, through
his accumulation of superior merit or kutho) to become ruler of the
country, overthrowing the reigning monarch. The emergence of a min-
laung was believed to be accompanied by special omens and signs; in
the months following the General Election of May 27, 1990, many
Burmese believed that Aung San Suu Kyi had assumed this role.
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300 • MISSIONARIES, CHRISTIAN

MISSIONARIES, CHRISTIAN. The role of Christian missionaries in

Burmese history is controversial. They are often depicted as accom-
plices of British colonial oppression and agents of cultural imperial-
ism, robbing indigenous people of their “authentic” beliefs and ways
of life, but other observers point to their vital role in promoting
health, education, and literacy, and a new national identity for eth-
nic minority peoples, especially among the Karens (Kayins),
Kachins, and Chins.
The first Christian missionaries were Roman Catholic and ac-
companied the Portuguese when they established a presence in
Lower Burma in the 16th and 17th centuries. The most prominent
early convert was Nat Shin-naung, lord of Toungoo (Taungoo) and
would-be king, who was also renowned as a poet. Outraged by his
renunciation of Buddhism and the egregious behavior of Felipe de
Brito, which included plundering the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, King
Anaukpetlun of Ava (Inwa) captured Toungoo and Syriam
(Thanlyin) in 1613 and subjected de Brito to a horrible execution.
However, Christianity was not totally eradicated; throughout the
18th and early 19th centuries, Roman Catholic priests, most notably
Father Vincentius Sangermano, carried out limited missionary work,
and a large church was built by a wealthy Armenian family at Syr-
iam around 1766.
Because the commercially oriented East India Company did not
want missionaries working in the areas under its control, Protestant
missionaries did not arrive in Burma until the early 19th century. The
first were Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, American Baptists,
who landed at Rangoon (Yangon) in 1813 and tried, without much
success, to proselytize Buddhist Burmans (Bamars). But the Jud-
sons, who relocated themselves in British-occupied territories after
the First Anglo-Burmese War, won a large number of converts
among the Karens (Kayins). In the late 19th and early 20th cen-
turies, the Baptists achieved even greater success among the Kachins
and Chins. Other Christian denominations, including the Catholics,
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Seventh-Day Adventists, have made
many converts among the Karennis (Kayah), Padaungs, and Na-
gas. Because large measure to the missionaries’ work, some 4 percent
of Burma’s population is now Christian, of whom three-quarters are
Baptists and most of the rest Roman Catholic.
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MISSIONARIES, CHRISTIAN • 301

The missionary experience in Burma generally conformed to a pat-

tern found throughout the non-Western world: Adherents to “world
religions,” such as Buddhism, Islam, or Hinduism were generally sat-
isfied with their own faiths and suspicious of the missionaries’ inten-
tions, while animists, living in localized, “tribal” societies, were of-
ten quite receptive, though their enthusiasm for Christianity is
sometimes exaggerated by church historians (many Chins, for exam-
ple, were outraged by Christian desecration of their ancient holy
places). Not only could missionaries offer the “hill tribes” medical
care, schooling, and other social services (which were not always ap-
preciated), but the Christian religion as they preached it intersected in
meaningful ways with traditional beliefs. For example, many of the
hill tribe people believed in a Supreme God and an afterlife, and had
a mytho-history sharing themes with the Bible (e.g., accounts of a
great flood). Resentment of oppression at the hands of Buddhist Bur-
mans led hill Karens to believe they would be liberated by white for-
eigners bringing a powerful sacred Book. Many missionaries actively
promoted a “national identity” for minority peoples by devising writ-
ing systems, promoting language/dialect standardization, and making
translations of the Bible and other books into indigenous languages.
Missionary schools fostered a new elite of preachers and teachers,
and Christian minority soldiers formed the backbone of the colonial
armed forces, many of whom rebelled against the Burmese govern-
ment after independence in 1948.
Conversions were often inspired by the courage and dedication of
individual missionaries, who typically were few in number, short of
resources, and frequently exposed to dangers in isolated “mission sta-
tions” in the hills. Although some worked closely with British colo-
nial authorities, others, such as the Baptist Laura Carson among the
Chins, were outspokenly critical of British “pacification” policies.
Burmans viewed the missionary construction of minority na-
tional identity as a “divide and rule” tactic. There was an element
of truth to this; for example, during the Third Anglo-Burmese
War, some foreign missionaries encouraged Karens to cooperate
with the British in suppressing Burmese rebels. Moreover, the
close connection between the Buddhist religion and national iden-
tity (Buddha Bata Myanma Lu-myo, “to be Burmese/Burman is to
be Buddhist”) among the Burmese meant that Christians were not
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302 • MOGOK

viewed as genuine members of mainstream Burmese society, a

sentiment that reaches back at least to the days of Nat Shin-naung
in the 17th century and is also widespread today.
After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in March
1962, foreign missionaries were obliged to leave the country, and the
schools they had established, such as the prestigious Methodist High
School in Rangoon (one of its alumnae is Aung San Suu Kyi) were
nationalized, a measure that robbed them of their religious character.
Since 1988 the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State
Peace and Development Council has aggressively promoted the
Buddhist religion, including the sponsorship of pagoda construction
nationwide. Sometimes Christians and other religious minorities are
forced to contribute to these activities, while the building of new
churches and the holding of Christian meetings are sharply circum-
scribed. The SPDC has been accused of carrying out systematic per-
secution of Christians and other religious minorities, and seems to
have the attitude that Christians, because of their religion, are poten-
tially subversive and disloyal elements.

MOGOK (MOGOKE). Located in the uplands of northern Mandalay

Division. Mogok has for centuries been Burma’s major producer of
sapphires and world famous “pigeon blood” rubies. Because gem-
stones are a state monopoly, the extensive mines, both open pits and
tunnels, are tightly controlled by the Tatmadaw, although foreign
visitors have been allowed in recent years. Because of the uncertain-
ties and sudden changes in fortune of the gem trade, the people of
Mogok have a reputation for being especially devout Buddhists.

MOKENS (SALONS). An ethnic minority, one of the very few groups

living in Burma who speak an Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian)
language. Moken or Maw Ken is the name they call themselves, while
Salon or Salone is the Burmese (Myanmar) language name for
them; the British referred to them as “Sea Gypsies.” They live in the
Mergui Archipelago in southern Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Divi-
sion, and are seminomadic boat dwellers, living on land only during
the rainy season. Closely related groups live in southern Thailand and
the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. They are skilled boat makers,
fishermen, and divers, and according to a legendary account sought
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MON STATE • 303

refuge on the water to escape oppression at the hands of the Malays.

According to James G. Scott, their traditional craft were dugouts
that could be as long as 30 feet (10 meters) and had large sails made
of palm fronds. The present population is not known but probably
does not number more than a couple of thousand; the colonial census
of 1891 recorded a population of 1,628. The scenic Mergui Archipel-
ago is being opened to international tourism, which may have a neg-
ative impact on traditional lifestyles; for example, the government
and private tourist agencies organized a commercialized “Salon Fes-
tival” in February 2004.

MON LANGUAGE. A member of the Austro-Asiatic group of lan-

guages widespread throughout Southeast Asia. Mon is closely related
to Khmer (Cambodian) and thus is often referred to as a “Mon-
Khmer language.” Although there are about two million Mons in
Burma today, many speak the Burmese (Myanmar) language rather
than Mon. A literary language since the sixth century CE, its writing
system is based on Indian scripts. Unlike Burmese, it does not have
tones, and modern Mon has three dialects, centered on Moulmein
(Mawlamyine)-Martaban (Mottama), Pegu (Bago), and Ye (Yay).
Because of the “Burmanization” policies of the State Peace and De-
velopment Council, many Mon scholars fear the extinction of their
language and its rich literary heritage. However, the school system
administered by the New Mon State Party and monastery schools
run by the Mon Sangha use Mon as the medium of instruction.

MON STATE. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions, with an area of

12,297 square kilometers (4,748 square miles) and a population esti-
mated at 2.5 million in 2000 (1983 census figure: 1,680,157). Ethni-
cally, the population is largely Mon and Burman (Bamar), though
there are also Karens (Kayins), Shans, and others. The state capital
is Moulmein (Mawlamyine), Burma’s third largest city (1996 esti-
mated population: 299,085). It contains two districts (Moulmein and
Thaton), subdivided into 10 townships. Mon State came into being
with the implementation of the Constitution of 1974, which recog-
nized the separation of Moulmein and Thaton districts from
Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division and their amalgamation as a
separate state.
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304 • MONG TAI ARMY

The topography is hilly, except on the coast. Mon State is bounded

by Karen (Kayin) State on the northeast and east and shares a short
international boundary with Thailand to the southeast; to the north-
west it touches Pegu (Bago) Division, and to the south, Tenasserim
Division. On the west, Mon State’s long seacoast is fringed with is-
lands (the largest is Bilu Gyun, or “demons’ island,” near Moulmein)
and fronts the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama). At Moulmein, the Sal-
ween (Thanlwin) River runs into the sea.
Major agricultural products are rice, rubber, sugarcane, and tropi-
cal fruits, especially durians. Fisheries are also economically impor-
tant. The towns of Moulmein, Thaton, and Martaban (Mottama) are
important in the maritime history of Burma. In the northern part of
the state, Kyaiktiyo Pagoda (the “Golden Rock”) is one of the most
important sites in Burmese Buddhism.

MONG TAI ARMY (MTA). In the Shan language, Mong Tai means
“Shan State,” thus “Shan State Army.” Commanded by the drug-
dealing warlord Khun Sa, it was one of the most powerful ethnic
minority armed groups in the early 1990s, with a total armed
strength of as many as 19,000 guerrillas. Although Khun Sa voiced
his commitment to Shan patriotism, the MTA, with its power base
primarily in central and southern Shan State and its headquarters at
Homong near the border with Thailand, played a major role in the
profitable export of opium and heroin to international markets. In
January 1996, Khun Sa surrendered to the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, which was a blow to Shan (Tai) nationalists,
who saw his armed group as a means of defending the interests of
their people. With its collapse, the Tatmadaw was able to gain ef-
fective control in much of central Shan State and carried out exten-
sive forced relocations. The SLORC–MTA agreement was different
from other post-1988 cease-fires because the armed group broke up
rather than continuing an autonomous existence like the Kachin In-
dependence Organization or the United Wa State Army (the in-
creasingly powerful UWSA played an important role in SLORC’s
pre-1996 strategy of softening up the MTA). Composed of MTA vet-
erans, the Shan State Army (South) continues to resist the State
Peace and Development Council in central Shan State.
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MONS • 305

MONS. One of the major ethnic nationalities of Burma, distinguished

by language, culture, and a history of organized states reaching back
to the early centuries CE. The Mon language is related to Cambo-
dian (Khmer), but the origin of the Mons is unclear. According to one
theory, they came to Mainland Southeast Asia from India (Talaing,
the Burmese term for them, is said to refer to southern India’s Telin-
gana region, though the Mons do not use this term as a self-reference,
considering it derogatory). Another widely accepted theory says they
came from the Yangtze River region of eastern China. They estab-
lished kingdoms in Lower Burma (which they called Ra-
manyadesa), were avid sailors and traders, and were primarily re-
sponsible for introducing Indian civilization and Theravada
Buddhism to what are now Burma and Thailand. The premier Mon
city-state in Burma, Hanthawaddy, was established ca. 825 CE at
what is now Pegu (Bago) and served as the capital of states ruled by
both Mons and Burmans for more than nine centuries.
King Anawrahta, founder of the Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty, con-
quered the Mon state of Thaton in 1057, bringing its king, Manuha,
and many thousands of Mon monks, craftsmen, and artists back to his
capital in Upper Burma. This was the beginning of a period when
Burman culture and national identity were deeply transformed—
especially in the religious, literary, and artistic fields—by the Mons.
Mon monks, such as Anawrahta’s spiritual advisor, Shin Arahan,
imposed strict Theravada orthodoxy; the early Buddhist monuments
of Pagan (Bagan) were essentially of Mon design; and the Burmans
adopted the Mon writing system. Following the collapse of the Pagan
Dynasty, Wareru established a powerful Mon dynasty at Martaban
in the late 13th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Mon state
of Hanthawaddy flourished, especially during the reigns of
Razadarit (r. 1393–1423), Shinsawbu (r. 1453–1472), and Dham-
mazedi (r. 1472–1492). The three monarchs are best remembered as
patrons of Buddhism and generous donors to the Shwe Dagon and
Shwemawdaw Pagodas.
Although the Burman rulers Tabinshwehti (r. 1531–1550) and
Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581) subjugated Lower Burma in the 16th cen-
tury, they made Hanthawaddy their capital, and highly esteemed Mon
culture for its contributions to religion and the arts. But Alaungpaya,
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306 • MOTION PICTURES IN BURMA

founder of the Konbaung Dynasty, reestablished Burman hegemony

in Lower Burma following an uprising led by Smim Daw Buddhaketi
between 1740 and 1747. He captured Dagon in 1755 and pillaged Han-
thawaddy in 1757. By this time, antagonism between Burmans and
Mons had become intense. With Hanthawaddy’s fall, the history of in-
dependent Mon states came to an end, and the last Mon king, Binnya
Dala, was executed by King Hsinbyushin in 1774.
During the 19th century, the British attempted to enlist the support
of the Mons against the Burmans, but with less success than they had
with the Karens (Kayins). During the colonial period, the Mons were
largely written off as a dying race and culture, but community lead-
ers established the All Ramanya Mon Association in 1939 to pro-
mote cultural revitalization. Proponents of Mon identity have tended
to define it in terms of ancestry rather than language, which a de-
creasing number of people speak. An estimated two to four million
Mons live in Burma today, about 4 to 8 percent of the population,
mostly in Mon State but also in adjoining Tenasserim
(Tanintharyi) Division and Karen (Kayin) State. Most of the orig-
inal Mon population of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River Delta
and Pegu Division fled to Thailand during the late 18th century or has
been assimilated by the Burmans. With the exception of a few Chris-
tians, most Mons are Buddhists, and they also venerate spirits simi-
lar to the Burmese nats, known as kalok.
After Burma became independent in 1948, some Mon armed
groups fought the central government, the most important being the
New Mon State Party (NMSP), established in 1958 and led by Nai
Shwe Kyin. In 1995, the NMSP signed a cease-fire with the State
Law and Order Restoration Council, but other armed groups, such
as the Monland Restoration Army, continue insurgent activities. See
also HONGSA; MANUHA TEMPLE.

MOTION PICTURES IN BURMA. The history of cinema in Burma

goes back to 1920, when a home-produced silent film, Myitta nit
Thuyar (Love and Liquor, described by The Irrawaddy magazine as
“the first successful attempt at film-making by the Burmans under the
directorship of Maung Ohn Maung”) was shown at a Rangoon (Yan-
gon) theater. The first talking film, Ngwe Pay Lo Maya (It Can’t Be
Paid with Money), premiered in 1932. Before World War II, a num-
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MOTION PICTURES IN BURMA • 307

ber of Burmese studios produced motion pictures for local audiences,

although the colonial government sometimes banned films touching
on controversial subjects (such as Aung Thapyay, which dealt with
King Thibaw and his exile by the British). However, Thakin Nu co-
produced a film about the student movement, Boycotta, which the
government permitted to be shown; his comrade Aung San is said to
have acted in some scenes. During World War II and the Japanese
Occupation, a perennial foreign favorite with Rangoon audiences
was Gone with the Wind.
After the war, Burmese cinema enjoyed a revival, with as many as
80 films being released annually from 1950 to 1960; many dealt with
political themes, such as Pa Le Myat Ye (Tears of Pearls), with its
theme of anti-imperialism. One of the most famous film stars was
Naw Louisa Benson, a former “Miss Burma” who married a Karen
(Kayin) guerrilla leader and assumed command of his men after he
was assassinated in 1965; undoubtedly, she was Burma’s most glam-
orous insurgent leader. Another popular film actress, Wa Wa Win
Shwe, had a scandalous relationship with Olive Yang, the notorious
“war-lady” of Kokang.
After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in March
1962, studios and movie theaters were nationalized, and Burmese
cinema assumed a monochromatic socialist hue. With the seizure of
power by the State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1988,
the film industry was privatized, but it remains under the tight con-
trol of the Motion Picture and Video Censor Board. For example,
films cannot be shot on college campuses because of the traditional
association of students with political opposition, and a recent ruling
by the Board forbids actresses to wear Western clothes, no matter
how modest. According to the 1996 Motion Picture Law, the indus-
try’s purpose is “to consolidate the national unity, to give correct
thoughts, and to promote sound knowledge; to help towards purify-
ing the moral character; and to contribute to perpetuation of sover-
eignty and national peace and development.”
Often, Military Intelligence or departments of the government
subsidize productions, such as Thu Kyun Ma Khan Byi (Never Shall
We Be Enslaved), a melodramatic film by Dr. Myo Thant Tin about
patriotic resistance against the British at the time of the Third Anglo-
Burmese War. Predictably, it won seven indigenous “academy
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308 • MOULMEIN

awards” in 1996. State Peace and Development Council Secretary-

1 Khin Nyunt played a guiding role in the film industry before his
arrest in October 2004. It is through his encouragement that a film on
AIDS in Burma, Ngar Thutabar Yaukkyar Meinma (Men and Women
Are Both Human), was produced, distributed, and won seven “Os-
cars” in 2004.
Because of censorship and the lack of resources, most local films
are dull, and there are few foreign alternatives. But watching movies
is a popular pastime, and cinemas are almost always crowded be-
cause few other pastimes are available to people of modest means—
even in a big city like Rangoon. Those who have access to satellite
television (satellite dishes sprout in large numbers on top of Rangoon
buildings) and videodiscs have a much wider variety of entertainment
from which to choose. See also MASS MEDIA IN BURMA.

MOULMEIN (MAWLAMYINE, MAWLAMYAING). The capital

of Mon State, located in the delta of the Salween (Thanlwin) River.
With an estimated population of 299,085 in 1996, it is Burma’s third
or fourth largest city and one of the country’s most important sea-
ports. Most of the population is Mon or Karen (Kayin). Between
1827 and 1852, it was the administrative center and most important
city in British Burma, a major port for the export of teak, but there-
after its prominence was eclipsed by Rangoon (Yangon). Offshore is
Gaungse Kyun, or “Shampoo Island,” which contains a spring from
which water was drawn for the Burmese king’s hair-washing cere-
mony during Thingyan. The city’s many old colonial buildings attest
to its cosmopolitan past.

MOUNTBATTEN, LORD LOUIS (1900–1979). Supreme Allied

Commander, South East Asia Command, 1943–1946, Mountbatten
carried out the Allied recapture of Burma from the Japanese. He is
best remembered by the Burmese for recognizing Aung San’s March
27, 1945, uprising against the Japanese as a legitimate part of the Al-
lied war effort (the rebels were designated the Patriotic Burmese
Forces) and for playing a major role in a conciliatory British policy
toward Aung San and the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League in
the months following the end of World War II. In 1946, he was given
the title Viscount (later Earl) Mountbatten of Burma in honor of his
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MUSIC, TRADITIONAL AND MODERN • 309

wartime achievements. His assassination by Irish Republican Army

terrorists in 1979 was widely mourned in Burma.

MOUSTACHE BROTHERS. A troupe of anyeint performers, based

in Mandalay. Specializing in song and dance, skits, and especially
comedy, their routines resemble old-fashioned vaudeville. In March
1996, troupe members Par Par Lay and Lu Zaw were sentenced to
seven years’ imprisonment for satirizing the State Law and Order
Restoration Council at an Independence Day celebration at the
house of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon (Yangon). They were
confined in a labor camp under harsh conditions in Kachin State,
later transferred to other prisons, and released in July 2001. The
Moustache Brothers continue to perform inside their house in Man-
dalay but are not allowed to perform outside. See also HUMAN
RIGHTS IN BURMA; PWE; ZARGANA.

MRAUK-U (MROHAUNG, MYOHAUNG). Capital of the Arakan

(Rakhine) kingdom between 1433 and 1784. During its golden age
from the mid-16th to mid-17th centuries, it was a major power in the
Bay of Bengal and a center of international trade. After the First
Anglo-Burmese War, it was abandoned as an administrative center
in favor of Sittwe (Sittway) and became overgrown by the jungle. Its
Buddhist temples and pagodas, located mostly north of the ruins of
the old royal palace, are of great archeological and artistic interest,
comparable to Pagan. Mostly built of stone, their design reflects In-
dian Muslim influences and is quite different from the Buddhist mon-
uments of Lower or Upper Burma. See also MIN BIN; SHIT-
THAUNG TEMPLE.

MUSIC, TRADITIONAL AND MODERN. Although deeply influ-

enced by Indian models, classical Burmese music received its inspira-
tion from Thailand after Thai/Siamese musicians and performers were
brought back to Burma following the capture of the Siamese capital,
Ayuthaya, by the armies of King Hsinbyushin in 1767. Such musical
genres are known by the Burmese as the “Yodaya (Ayuthaya) style,”
synonymous with refinement. In the traditional orchestra, containing
seven to ten players, the most prominent instrument is the saing waing,
a circle of finely tuned drums; accompanying instruments include the
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310 • MUSLIMS IN BURMA

kye waing (brass gongs), the saung gauq (a harp with 13 strings), the
mi-gyaung (“crocodile lute”), the pattala (xylophone), and the hneh
(similar to an oboe). For foreign listeners who find Burmese instru-
mental music discordant, a more appealing genre may be solos on the
“Burmese harp” (saung gauq), often performed by a woman, which are
remarkable for their tranquil and meditative moods.
Western musical modes were introduced during the British colo-
nial period, and a “pop” (popular) music scene has existed in Ran-
goon (Yangon) and other urban areas since at least the Burma So-
cialist Programme Party era (1962–1988), although Ne Win
himself regarded Western-style music as a decadent influence. Under
the State Peace and Development Council, globalization has en-
couraged one of Southeast Asia’s liveliest rock music scenes, which
includes local versions of “rap” and “hip-hop”; given political ten-
sions and the regime’s perennial fear of unrest, the SPDC’s strategy
has been to co-opt, rather than suppress, popular youth-oriented mu-
sic groups like Iron Cross. But, as in other countries, rock music of-
ten serves as a barometer for the younger generation’s frustrations
and disillusionment. See also PERFORMING ARTS, TRADI-
TIONAL.

MUSLIMS IN BURMA. Members of the Islamic community have

lived in Burma since before the Pagan Dynasty, arriving by way of
Indian Ocean trade routes and the Indian subcontinent. At the begin-
ning of the 21st century, the Burmese government estimated that
Muslims comprised 4 percent of the country’s population, while
other sources estimate it as high as 10 percent. As many as 1.5 mil-
lion Burmese Muslims live abroad, primarily in Bangladesh, Pak-
istan, and the countries of the Middle East. A substantial number of
these have fled persecution at the hands of the government, and Ro-
hingyas, the most numerous refugee group, have been called the
“new Palestinians.”
There is considerable diversity among Burmese Muslims. The ear-
liest wave of migrants included merchants and mercenary soldiers of
Arab, Iranian, or Indian ancestry who arrived during the precolonial
period. In royal capitals, such as Ava (Inwa), Amarapura, and Man-
dalay, there were special quarters for Muslim merchants and crafts-
men, and they were allowed by the king to build mosques for their
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MUSLIMS IN BURMA • 311

community. Some Muslims achieved high office under the Burmese

kings. There are also Panthays, descendants of Chinese Muslims
who came from Yunnan Province during the 19th century and live for
the most part in Shan State. During the colonial period, a third group
of Muslims migrated from the Indian subcontinent, immigration be-
ing encouraged by the British for economic reasons. Many became
merchants and civil servants, and Rangoon (Yangon) has extensive
Muslim neighborhoods dating from this time. A fourth group, the
largest, are the Rohingyas of Arakan (Rakhine) State, including
both descendants of migrants from neighboring Bengal (now
Bangladesh) and Arakanese (Rakhine) converts to Islam.
Because the ancestors of most Burmese Muslims were not resident
in the country before the First Anglo-Burmese War, they are not
considered “indigenous” and do not enjoy full rights under the Citi-
zenship Law of 1982. Zerbadi (Zerabadi), a term derived from Per-
sian (zir-bad, “below the winds,” i.e., Southeast Asia), is used to re-
fer to the children of Muslims (usually Muslim men) and Burmese.
Before World War II, such mixed marriages aroused the resentment
of Burmese nationalists. Partly to better observe sharia (Islamic law)
Muslims in Burma tend to live in segregated communities.
The Muslim community, especially the Rohingyas, have suffered
systematic persecution at the hands of successive governments
since Ne Win seized power in 1962, and their social position has
deteriorated on a number of fronts. In contrast to the parliamentary
government period (1948–1962), they hold no important political
offices. Few if any Muslims are found in the higher ranks of the
Tatmadaw. Like all Burmese, they are required to carry identifica-
tion cards stating their religion, which leaves them vulnerable to of-
ficial discrimination. In recent years, they have often not been al-
lowed to build new mosques, or even repair old ones, and many
mosques have been torn down by the authorities, especially in
Arakan State. There is ample evidence to suggest that the State
Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and Develop-
ment Council has manipulated popular prejudices to incite mob vi-
olence against Muslim neighborhoods. It is also true, however, that
such anti-Muslim prejudices are deeply rooted among Burmese
Buddhists, including members of the Sangha, stimulated by every-
day frictions between Muslims and non-Muslims in an environment
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312 • MYA, BO

of deepening poverty, as well as government-encouraged rumor-

mongering. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

MYA, BO (1927– ). Also Saw Bo Mya, a prominent Karen (Kayin) in-

surgent leader, who has fought against the Burmese central govern-
ment since the Karen National Union (KNU) uprising of January
1949. Unlike many leaders of the Karen community, he was born not
in the delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River but in the hilly
Papun District, near the border with Thailand, and was an animist un-
til his conversion to the Seventh-Day Adventist church in 1961. During
World War II, he served as a policeman under the Japanese but also
worked with Force 136. After the 1949 revolt against the government
of U Nu began, Bo Mya commanded guerrillas in the Dawna Range
and gained a strong economic base for his insurgency by operating
“toll gates” for the cross-border trade near the town of Mae Sot-
Myawaddy in Thailand’s Tak Province; his army prospered as the
black market absorbed imports from Thailand during the Ne Win era,
but he did not engage in the trade in opium or other drugs.
Strongly anticommunist, he purged the mainstream Karen move-
ment of leftists in the 1960s and became chairman of a reunified
KNU in 1976, a post that he held until 2000, when Saw Ba Thin Sein
replaced him. He was chairman of an ethnic minority united front,
the National Democratic Front, between 1976 and 1987, and became
the leader of the Democratic Alliance of Burma in November 1988.
With only a grade-school education, he exhibited a toughness and de-
termination lacking in many of the more educated, urbanized Karen
leaders. But the low point of his long career came with the fall of the
KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in 1995, which many blamed on
his allegedly heavy-handed and inflexible leadership. The Tat-
madaw’s success in capturing the base was caused in large measure to
the defection from the KNU of the Democratic Karen Buddhist
Army, whose members had become alienated from Bo Mya and
other, mostly Christian, Karen leaders. On January 15, 2004, Bo
Mya, as KNU vice chairman, went to Rangoon (Yangon) for talks
with then Prime Minister Khin Nyunt on a cease-fire between the
KNU and the State Peace and Development Council.

MYANMAR MATERNAL AND CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIA-

TION (MMCWA). Established in 1991, a major GONGO (“govern-
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MYAUNGMYA (MYOUNGMYA) MASSACRES • 313

ment organized nongovernmental organization”), headed for a time

by the wife of former Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt. Its leadership con-
sists of the wives of high-ranking Tatmadaw officers, and member-
ship nationwide is estimated at around 1.1 million “ordinary” and
340,000 “permanent” members. Like the Union Solidarity and De-
velopment Association, the MMCWA is designed to assert the gov-
ernment’s control at the grassroots level, but some observers have
credited it with raising ordinary women’s awareness of the dangers
of AIDS and the sex industry. Other important GONGOs include the
Myanmar Red Cross and the Myanmar Fire Brigade.

MYANMAR NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE ARMY/

PARTY (MNDAA/MNDAP). A cease-fire armed group formed af-
ter the break-up of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989, which
is based in the Kokang region of Shan State. Originally led by Phe-
ung Kya-shin (Peng Jiasheng) and his brother Pheung Kya-fu (Peng
Jiafu), the group lost power to another warlord, Yang Mo Lian, in the
“opium war” of late 1992, but later regained control of Kokang and
the MNDAA. It is one of the major drug-funded armed groups in
Burma. See also UNITED WA STATE ARMY.

MYANMAR POLICE FORCE (MPF). Formerly known as the Peo-

ple’s Police Force, the Myanmar Police Force was reorganized in
1995 and at the beginning of the 21st century consists of 72,000 per-
sonnel. Formally under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs,
the MPF includes state and division police forces and nine “combat
battalions,” totaling 4,500 men, many of whom are based in and
around Rangoon (Yangon); these combat units are believed to have
absorbed the old Lon Htein (Riot Police), which achieved infamy af-
ter their brutal handling of demonstrations in Rangoon during March
and June 1988. Though often commanded by retired army officers,
the combat battalions, like other MPF units, are jurisdictionally inde-
pendent of the Tatmadaw but serve as auxiliaries in internal security
operations, especially in urban areas.

MYAUNGMYA (MYOUNGMYA) MASSACRES (1942). A township

in the delta of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, in present-day Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Division, and the site of ethnic violence be-
tween the Burman (Bamar) soldiers of the Burma Independence
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314 • MYEINIGONE MARKET INCIDENT

Army (BIA) and the local Karen (Kayin) population, as well as a

smaller number of Indians who fought alongside the latter. After the
British retreated from Lower Burma in early 1942, many Karens in the
Delta region, including those demobilized from British forces, remained
loyal to them, and the assassination of a Japanese officer provoked an
order from Colonel Suzuki Keiji to the BIA that all the inhabitants of
two Karen villages (which had nothing to do with the assassination), in-
cluding women and children, be massacred. The Karens, who had re-
fused to surrender their British-issued weapons to the BIA, retaliated,
and a race war began, with many innocent victims on both the Karen-
Indian and Burman sides. The worst incidents were in and around
Myaungmya, where an estimated 1,800 Karens were killed and 400
Karen villages destroyed. The massacres were stopped only when the
regular Japanese army moved in to restore order. Dr. Ba Maw sought
reconciliation between the races, establishing a “Karen Central Organi-
sation” to promote this end, but Karen suspicion of the Burmans con-
tinued, leading to the 1949 Karen National Union uprising, which had
as its goal the creation of an independent Karen state. See also JAPAN-
ESE OCCUPATION; WORLD WAR II, ETHNIC MINORITIES IN.

MYEINIGONE MARKET INCIDENT (JUNE 21, 1988). A major

clash between student demonstrators and the authorities, which oc-
curred near the Myeinigone (Myay Ni Gone) Market north of the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon). Several thousand students be-
gan a march from the Main Campus of Rangoon (Yangon) University
to the Institute of Medicine downtown along Prome (Pyay) Road,
protesting the imprisonment of their comrades and the suspension of
classes on university campuses. Surrounded and attacked by Riot Po-
lice (Lon Htein) and army troops, they escaped into narrow side streets,
were sheltered by local residents, and fought back using jinglees, or
homemade catapults that launched sharpened bicycle spokes, like prim-
itive crossbows. At least 10 Riot Police died, and students suffered an
estimated 100 casualties. In 1998, a decade after the clash, there were
rumors that the Myeinigone area was infested with nats, the ghosts of
protestors who had been killed. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

MYITKYINA. The capital of Kachin State, with a population esti-

mated at 73,554 in 1996. It is located in a valley along the upper
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NAGANI BOOK CLUB • 315

reaches of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River. It was the site of

major battles between the Allies and Japanese during World War II,
including operations carried out by Merrill’s Marauders.

MYO. Meaning town, city, or an administrative jurisdiction in the

Burmese (Myanmar) language, it originally referred to a fortified
settlement with a wall, a permanent market (zay), and a shrine dedi-
cated to the local spirit or nat. During the precolonial period, the my-
oza, or “town eater,” was a member of the royal family or a high-
ranking official to whom the king allocated the income of the myo, a
kind of appanage. The myothugyi, or chief of the myo, was a member
of the local gentry (not a clearly defined aristocratic class) whose
post was generally hereditary, and who served as intermediary be-
tween the the myo and its adjacent villages and the royal court, for ex-
ample, in negotiating taxation or “labor service.” Deeming them un-
trustworthy, the British abolished the post of myothugyi, a measure
that is said to have created major problems for their subsequent ad-
ministration. See also ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIETY, PRE-
COLONIAL BURMA; ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA,
BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD.

–N–

NAGA. A mythological serpent-dragon, originally an Indian motif but

now widespread in Southeast Asia (e.g., carved in stone at Angkor
Wat in Cambodia). Nagas figure prominently in the legends associ-
ated with Gotama Buddha, and a nagayon temple is one where a ser-
pent, usually resembling a cobra, is depicted protecting a Buddha im-
age with its hood, an outstanding example being the one built at
Pagan (Bagan) by King Kyanzittha.

NAGANI BOOK CLUB. A publishing enterprise established in 1937

by Thakins Nu, Than Tun, and other members of the Dobama Asi-
ayone to expose their compatriots to modern political and world af-
fairs literature. During the British colonial period, few books were
published in the languages of Burma, and most of them dealt with
traditional subjects, such as Buddhism. The Nagani (Red Dragon)
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316 • NAGAS

Book Club published both original books and translated ones, num-
bering 71 titles, between 1938 and 1941. They dealt with Burmese
politics; Soviet Russia; the Irish revolution; Chinese politics, in-
cluding the works of Sun Yat-sen; Adolph Hitler; and other issues,
including a translation of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and
Influence People by Thakin Nu. The club also held public lectures
and published a journal and had a major influence on encouraging
young Burmese to become politically active during and after World
War II.

NAGAS. An ethnic nationality living in the mountainous region be-

tween the valley of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River and the
basin of the Brahmaputra River in northeastern India. The majority
of Nagas live in India, but there is also a significant population lo-
cated principally in Sagaing Division, and also in Chin and Kachin
States, along the Burma–India border. Naga sources estimate the to-
tal population at 3.5 million. Nagalim, a term that the Nagas fre-
quently use to refer to their homeland, encompasses parts of both In-
dia and Burma.
The Nagas speak Tibeto-Burman languages and are subdivided
into 42 tribal groups. In broad contours, their history, beliefs, and
customs resemble those of other Tibeto-Burman upland groups such
as the Chins and the Kachins. They were never controlled by low-
land Burman (Bamar) or Indian states, and adhered to animistic be-
liefs until a majority of Nagas were converted to Christianity in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Living in mountainous areas, they
traditionally practiced slash-and-burn or swidden agriculture and
had no unifying political institutions above the village level. Inter-
village raids, including head hunting, were frequent. The village cen-
ter was the morung (men’s association), which was decorated with
human skulls, taken to enhance the fertility of Naga fields and as a
proof of manhood by young warriors. The British colonial govern-
ment imposed effective control over the Burmese Nagas only in
1940. Naga levies fought alongside the British during World War II.
In part because of the activities of the Christian missionaries, the Na-
gas developed a strong national consciousness and demanded their
own state on the eve of India’s independence from Britain in 1947.
The major armed group claiming to represent the Nagas is the Na-
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NAMES, BURMESE • 317

tional Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), which has operated

primarily in India, but also in Burma.

NAMES, BURMESE. Burmese names usually consist of two or three

monosyllables which, taken together, have a meaning; for example,
Khin Nyunt can be a man or woman’s name, meaning “the utmost of
friendliness.” Occasionally a name may be a single syllable, such as
that of Burma’s former prime minister, Nu, “gentle.” Westerners often
thought his name was “U Nu,” but the first syllable is a respectful ti-
tle (see below). Unlike East Asians or Westerners, Burmese do not
have family names, and attempts to introduce them have not been suc-
cessful. Nor do they have patronymics, like the “son/daughter of”
forms found in Russian, Arabic, and other languages. Traditionally,
the day of the eight-day week on which a person is born determines
the letter with which his or her name begins, for example, the
Burmese equivalent of “k/g” on Monday, and “m” or “b/p” on Thurs-
day. Parents take special care to give a child an auspicious name, and
the name may be changed in later life on the advice of a practitioner
of astrology. However, neither men nor women change their names
upon marrying.
Because of the lack of family names, there is often considerable
confusion because so many people have the same given name, even
taking into account the tonal differences of the Burmese (Myanmar)
language. For example, there are three important Tin Oo’s (or Tin
U’s) in modern Burmese history: a former director of Military In-
telligence, a leader of the National League for Democracy, and a
general who was second secretary (Secretary-2) of the State Peace
and Development Council until his accidental death in 2001. People
with the more common sort of names often append a clarifying pre-
fix; for example, in daily conversation, people will distinguish be-
tween “Mandalay Maung Shwe” (Maung Shwe who comes from
Mandalay) and “Tekatho [university] Maung Shwe” (Maung Shwe
who attended/graduated from university). “Suu Kyi” is a common
lady’s name, but Aung San Suu Kyi could only be the daughter of
Burma’s independence leader. It is said that even Military Intelli-
gence makes mistakes in identifying people because of the large
number of commonly used names, although careful dossiers are kept
on dissidents. Despite the end of British colonial rule, many Burmese
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318 • NAN CHAO

take a Western given name to supplement their Burmese name, which

is useful in dealing with foreigners. Christians often take a name
from the Bible.
Apart from the names themselves, honorific forms of address are
used to indicate a person’s age and status. U (“uncle”) and Daw
(“aunt”) are used to address adult men and women; ko is used for a
young male, ma being the female equivalent; and maung for a boy,
while ma is used for girls. Saya, meaning “teacher” (female:
sayama), is used not only for educators, but also for physicians, writ-
ers, artists, bosses, or any person in a responsible position whose ap-
proval one seeks. Members of the sangha, or Buddhist monkhood,
have special names and titles that must be used with care.
The minorities have their own terms of address. Among the Shans,
Sai is the equivalent of U, Nang for Daw; among the Mons, Nai for
U and Mi for Daw or Ma; and among the Karens, Saw for U and Naw
for Daw or Ma. Most of Burma’s ethnic minorities do not have fam-
ily names; the Kachins are an exception.

NAN CHAO. During the Later Han Dynasty, in the second century CE,
the Chinese gained control of what is now Yunnan Province. In the
seventh century, a local state known as Nan Chao was established,
which succeeded in wresting control of the region from the Chinese
by the middle of the following century. Scholars originally believed
the rulers of Nan Chao had a common origin with the Shan (Tai) of
eastern Burma and other Tai groups, but most currently believe, on
linguistic evidence, that they were people speaking a Tibeto-Burman
language, possibly related to the Lolos of modern Yunnan. During the
eighth and ninth centuries, Nan Chao was a militarily powerful state
that exercised influence, if not control, over several areas of Main-
land Southeast Asia, including the upper Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)
River Valley. Its expansion had a major impact on the Pyu states of
early Burma.
By the 10th century, however, Nan Chao’s power had waned be-
cause of internal dissension, the rise of an independent Vietnam (Dai
Viet), and other factors. It was no longer a major force in the politics
and warfare of Upper Burma when in the mid-11th century King
Anawrahta founded the Pagan Dynasty, whose nucleus was a set-
tlement on the Irrawaddy River founded by the Burmans (Bamars)
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NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION OF BURMA • 319

two centuries earlier. The role of Nan Chao in early Burmese history
is not clearly understood, but it was probably of major importance,
especially because the control of Yunnan by non-Chinese dynasties
between the 8th and 13th centuries may have prevented Burma from
undergoing Chinese cultural assimilation similar to that experienced
by Vietnam. Burma remained firmly within the Indian sphere of civ-
ilization, as reflected in the central role of Theravada Buddhism in
national identity. When Nan Chao’s successor state was conquered by
Khubilai Khan in the mid-13th century, the way was cleared for
China to assume a more important, and at times threatening, role in
Burmese affairs. See also PAGAN (BAGAN).

NARATHIHAPATE, KING (r. 1254–1287). The last major king of the

Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty. He earned the inglorious title “the king
who fled from the Chinese” following an invasion of Upper Burma
by an army of Kubhilai Khan, Mongol emperor of China. Refusing
to become Kubhilai’s tributary, Narathihapate foolishly executed the
Mongol ambassador, and was driven from Pagan (Bagan) by the
Mongols in 1283, seeking refuge in the delta of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River. In 1287, shorn of his realm, he was assassi-
nated by one of his sons.

NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION OF

BURMA (NCGUB). A major opposition organization, which de-
scribes itself as “constituted by elected members of parliament in ex-
ile.” Following the victory of the National League for Democracy
(NLD) in the General Election of May 27, 1990, members of par-
liament, including those from other parties, met and issued the July
28 Gandhi Hall Declaration, calling for a speedy transfer of power.
This was in response to the State Law and Order Restoration
Council’s issuance of SLORC Announcement 1/90 on the previous
day, declaring that only it had the right to exercise legislative, exec-
utive, and judicial authority. Subsequently, plans were made to
arrange the convening of parliament in Mandalay, but a wave of ar-
rests of key NLD leaders, including U Kyi Maung, persuaded NLD
parliamentarians still at large to endorse a provisional government in
Burma’s border areas. Thus, the NCGUB was established on De-
cember 18, 1990, at Manerplaw, headquarters of both the Karen
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320 • NATIONAL CONVENTION

National Union and Democratic Alliance of Burma, with Dr. Sein

Win, a cousin of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, serving as prime minis-
ter. In 2005, the NCGUB had its headquarters in Washington, D.C.,
and played a primarily formal and informational role, for example,
publishing a Human Rights Yearbook. See also NATIONAL COUN-
CIL OF THE UNION OF BURMA.

NATIONAL CONVENTION (NC). The constitution-drafting body

established by the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) in 1992. According to SLORC Announcement No. 1/90,
a transfer of power from the military regime to a civilian government
cannot occur until a new constitution is promulgated. The NC, con-
sisting of 702 delegates, met in plenary session for the first time on
January 9, 1993. Delegates included 99 members of political parties
that had participated in the General Election of May 27, 1990, in-
cluding the National League for Democracy, and appointed dele-
gates drawn from six other groups: ethnic nationalities, peasants,
workers, intellectuals, civil servants, and “other invitees.” In No-
vember 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi withdrew members of the National
League for Democracy from the NC, protesting its undemocratic pro-
cedures.
When Prime Minister Khin Nyunt announced a “road map” for
democratization following the “Black Friday” Incident of May 30,
2003, one of the first goals was completion of the new constitution.
On May 17, 2004, the NC reconvened near Hmawbi, outside of Ran-
goon (Yangon). Over 1,000 delegates attended, but there were
doubts about whether it could draft a basic law that would be consid-
ered legitimate, not only because the National League for Democ-
racy refused to participate (Daw Suu Kyi was again under house ar-
rest), but also because six ethnic armed groups that had signed
cease-fires with the post-1988 military regime, including the Kachin
Independence Army/Organization and the New Mon State Party,
recommended that the draft constitution be amended to reduce the
Tatmadaw’s role in politics, a proposal Khin Nyunt flatly rejected.
Just as in the 1993–1996 period, no opposition party now has a role
in the work of the organizing committee. Although the NC has pub-
lished a detailed outline of a proposed new constitution, it had not
produced a final constitutional draft as of mid-2005. Reasons for the
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NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE UNION OF BURMA • 321

delay seem to include a desire on the part of the military regime to

postpone transition to a civilian government and difficulties in work-
ing out constitutional arrangements between the central government
and armed ethnic minority groups living in the border areas. See also
NATIONAL CONVENTION, CONSTITUTIONAL OUTLINE OF.

NATIONAL CONVENTION, CONSTITUTIONAL OUTLINE OF.

In the mid-1990s, the National Convention published a detailed out-
line of a proposed constitution, though it has not issued the final
draft. Its most fundamental characteristic is the dominant role that the
Tatmadaw would continue to play in the new political system: one-
quarter of all seats in the bicameral national legislature would be al-
located to military personnel; the armed forces would continue to
have a major role in national and regional administration, especially
in relation to security matters; and would have a decisive say in
choosing the Union president. The Tatmadaw would appoint the min-
isterial portfolios of defense, home affairs, and border security and be
free of supervision or control by civilian officials. Martial law could
be reimposed in times of national emergency, just as in 1988. The
outline reflects the military regime’s conviction that civilian politi-
cians ought not to “meddle” in national politics; but it also owes
much to the model of President Suharto’s “New Order” in Indonesia,
especially the guaranteed military seats in the law-making body and
tight restrictions on political parties.

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE UNION OF BURMA (NCUB). Part

of the Burmese government-in-exile, it is often confused with the Na-
tional Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB). The
NCUB in principle functions as a parliament-in-exile, composed of
members of the National League for Democracy—Liberated Areas
(NLD—LA), the Members of Parliament Union (MPU), the Demo-
cratic Alliance of Burma (DAB), and the National Democratic Front.
The NCGUB is the “government” or “cabinet” of the NCUB, headed by
the prime minister, Dr. Sein Win, and is “responsible” to it. The NCUB
has drafted a constitution and advocates the initiation of a “tripartite di-
alogue” involving the ethnic nationalities, the democratic forces led by
Aung San Suu Kyi, and the military government to achieve political
reconciliation.
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322 • NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE ARMY—EASTERN SHAN STATE

NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE ARMY—EASTERN

SHAN STATE (NDAA—ESS). A cease-fire armed group formed
after the breakup of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989, which
is based in Shan State, north of Keng Tung. With an armed strength
of 3,500–4,000 men, it is considered a major player in the drug trade
with China and other neighboring countries. See also UNITED WA
STATE ARMY.

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE BUREAU (NIB). An agency that

oversaw the wide-ranging intelligence activities of the State Peace
and Development Council, established during the Burma Socialist
Programme Party era (1962–1988). Until it was abolished in Octo-
ber 2004, it coordinated the work of information-gathering agencies
in the Ministries of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, National Planning
and Economic Development, and Defence, though the Defence Min-
istry’s Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence (DDSI) was the
single most powerful intelligence organ. See also KHIN NYUNT;
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE; MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, OR-
GANIZATION OF.

NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY (NLD). Burma’s largest

opposition party, winner of the General Election of May 27, 1990. The
party traces its origins to the Aung-Suu-Tin coalition of opposition lead-
ers, Aung Gyi, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Tin U, who joined forces on
September 12, 1988. On September 24, 1988, in the wake of the power
seizure by the State Law and Order Restoration Council and the es-
tablishment of a multiparty political system, they founded the NLD,
with Aung Gyi serving as chairman, Tin U as vice chairman, and Aung
San Suu Kyi as general secretary. Party leadership also included a 12-
member central executive committee, composed of mostly conservative
figures, including retired army officers, such as U Aung Shwe, U Kyi
Maung, and U Lwin. At one time, the party claimed a membership of
as many as two million, with branches nationwide.
From its inception, the NLD faced serious difficulties. On Decem-
ber 9, 1988, Aung Gyi and his supporters left the party, claiming that
the Communist Party of Burma had infiltrated the NLD and that
Aung San Suu Kyi was under its influence. On July 20, 1989, Daw
Suu Kyi, who is the NLD’s most popular figure, and party chairman
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NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY • 323

Tin U were placed under house arrest; the former was not released
until July 10, 1995. Although the NLD, which campaigned under the
symbol of the kamauk or farmer’s bamboo hat, won almost 60 per-
cent of the popular vote and over 80 percent of the seats contested in
the May 1990 election, the SLORC did not allow it to form a gov-
ernment. Instead, the party has endured systematic repression at the
hands of the authorities, including periodic arrest of most of its top
leaders (including all but four members of the central executive com-
mittee by late 1990), detention or arrest of elected NLD parliamen-
tarians, intimidation and arrest of local party branch leaders and
members (many of whom were pressured to resign), and “mass” ral-
lies, organized by the Union Solidarity and Development Associa-
tion, demanding the party’s dissolution. In the late 1990s, the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC) repeatedly prevented
Daw Suu Kyi from visiting NLD branches outside Rangoon (Yan-
gon), and Military Intelligence kept careful watch on both Daw Suu
Kyi’s home on University Avenue and NLD headquarters on West
Shwegondine Road in the capital city. Pressure on the party intensi-
fied further after it established the Committee Representing the
People’s Parliament on September 16, 1998, although as of mid-
2005 the SPDC had not taken the final step of revoking the party’s le-
gal status. Hundreds of NLD leaders and members languish in jail,
though others were released during a 2001–2002 “thaw” brokered by
United Nations special envoy Razali Ismail.
Some observers have criticized Daw Suu Kyi and other NLD lead-
ers for failing to develop coherent party policies, especially concern-
ing relations between the Burmans (Bamars) and the ethnic minori-
ties, and for being intolerant of dissent inside the party. However, it
is evident that the SPDC has tried hard to divide the NLD from
within, largely by discrediting Daw Suu Kyi, and has denied the party
the freedom necessary to carry out normal activities.
Following her release from house arrest in May 2002, Daw Suu
Kyi was able to visit party branches in various parts of the country,
including Shan State, Mandalay Division, and Arakan (Rakhine)
State. Most analysts considered the NLD’s organizational structure
moribund after more than a dozen years of persecution, although the
sympathy and support of a “silent majority” of Burmese for the party
remains potentially huge. See also “BLACK FRIDAY” INCIDENT;
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324 • NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY—LIBERATED AREAS

NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY—LIBERATED AR-

EAS; NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION
OF BURMA.

NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY—LIBERATED AR-

EAS (NLD—LA). Established in February 1991 at Manerplaw in
Karen (Kayin) State; it represents the National League for De-
mocracy in the border areas and foreign countries.

NATIONAL SCHOOLS. Following the 1920 student boycott that op-

posed the act establishing Rangoon (Yangon) University, “national
schools” offering a curriculum emphasizing Burmese (Myanmar)
language and culture and Buddhism were established throughout
the country. A Council of National Education was set up in 1921,
which set standards and examinations for the schools. Between 1921
and 1923, the number of such schools increased rapidly, although a
controversy ensued between those schools that were willing to accept
government aid (subjecting them to a measure of government regu-
lation) and those that rejected it. Many of the schools went bankrupt,
but those national schools that survived graduated many of the lead-
ers of the independence struggle during the 1930s and 1940s, includ-
ing Aung San, who attended a national high school in Yenangyaung
(Yaynangyoung) in what is now Magwe (Magway) Division.
A “national college,” conceived as a patriotic alternative to Ran-
goon University with its British curriculum, was established in Au-
gust 1921 at a Buddhist monastery in Bahan Township, Rangoon
(Yangon). Its faculty included the famous writer Thakin Kodaw
Hmaing. But it suffered from lack of funding, government displeas-
ure, and factional splits within the main Burmese political organiza-
tion, the General Council of Burmese Associations, and closed in
1923. See also EDUCATION; EDUCATION, HIGHER.

NATIONAL SOCIALIST COUNCIL OF NAGALAND (NSCN). Es-

tablished in 1980, the principal armed group claiming to represent the
Nagas. Its goal is to establish an independent Nagaland (Nagalim).
The movement divided into two factions in 1988, one headed by
Thuingaleng Muivah and Isaac Chishi Swu (NSCN-IM), the other
headed by SS Khaplang (NSCN-K). Both factions have engaged in
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NATIONAL UNITY • 325

peace talks with the Indian government, the NSCN-IM more exten-
sively. In the 1990s the NSCN-K established a “government-in-exile”
in the Patkai Mountains in western Sagaing Division, but it was over-
run by the Tatmadaw in 2003, reflecting increased cooperation be-
tween Burma and India in suppressing border area insurgents.

NATIONAL UNITY. Although Aung San recognized ethnic minority

aspirations for administrative and cultural autonomy at the Panglong
Conference of February 1947, in principle promoting “unity through
diversity” and limited federalism, the government of General Ne
Win (1962–1988), dominated by ethnic majority Burmans, imposed
a concept of national unity based on linguistic and cultural “Bur-
manization,” top-down Tatmadaw control of politics and the econ-
omy, and a worldview that stressed that differences between the var-
ious ethnic groups are trivial and were used as a “divide and rule”
tactic by the British during the colonial period. Thus, successive mil-
itary regimes have asserted the essential homogeneity of the Burmese
people, an idea that can be traced back at least to the wartime “total-
itarian” government of Dr. Ba Maw.
Both during the Revolutionary Council period (1962–1973) and
after the Constitution of 1974 was implemented, the ethnic minority
states lost their special status, as defined in the Constitution of 1947.
Legal expressions of ethnic minority identity were largely confined
to national costumes and dance and the rituals of Union Day, Febru-
ary 12, which celebrates the Panglong accord. The State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) has committed itself to upholding
the Tatmadaw’s historical role of safeguarding national unity, which
constitutes its principal claim to legitimacy. It sees foreign countries,
especially in the West, as determined to reimpose colonial subjuga-
tion by dividing the peoples of Burma, and has attacked Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi as an accomplice in this scheme because of her mar-
riage to a British academic and the moral support she has received
from Europe and North America. SPDC officials and their foreign
supporters claim that if controls on the democratic opposition and the
minorities are loosened, the country will “break apart,” like Yu-
goslavia. However, cease-fires with certain minority armed groups
have given some of them de facto autonomy. See also HUMAN
RIGHTS IN BURMA; THREE MAIN NATIONAL CAUSES.
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326 • NATIONAL UNITY FRONT

NATIONAL UNITY FRONT (NUF). Established in 1955 as a coali-

tion of the Burma Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and other groups;
functioned as the principal opposition to the Anti-Fascist People’s
Freedom League (AFPFL) in the general election of 1956, winning
47 parliamentary seats and 37 percent of the popular vote. When the
AFPFL split in 1958, the NUF supported U Nu’s “Clean” faction.
Most NUF leaders were jailed during the Caretaker Government
period, and it failed to win any seats in the 1960 general election.
However, some NUF leaders advised the Revolutionary Council af-
ter March 1962 and contributed to the “Burmese Road to Social-
ism” ideology. Like other political parties, it was banned by the Rev-
olutionary Council in 1964.

NATIONAL UNITY PARTY (NUP). Name of the Burma Socialist

Programme Party (BSPP) after it lost its status as the only legal po-
litical party and was reorganized as a “democratic” party on Septem-
ber 26, 1988. Although many observers believed it would do well in
the General Election of May 27, 1990 because of superior resources
and connections, the NUP’s leadership consisted of low-ranking
cadres from the old BSPP, and the party was shunned by many vot-
ers because of its record of failure between 1962 and 1988. In the
election, it won 21.2 percent of the popular vote and 10 seats. How-
ever, the NUP was included among parties represented on the Na-
tional Convention, the constitution-drafting body convened in Janu-
ary 1993.

NAT-PWE. A festival in honor of the nats (spirits) of traditional

Burmese religion. It involves their invocation, customarily through
the playing of loud music, and has the object of securing their bless-
ing. The spirit comes down to Earth and enters a nat-gadaw (“nat
wife”), usually a male transvestite (less commonly nowadays a
woman), whose role is similar to that of a shaman who enters an ec-
static trance. The nat-gadaw (or nat-kadaw) is said to be “elected”
by a patron nat for a lifetime role as spiritual intermediary. While
possessed by the nat, he or she dances and behaves outrageously,
transgressing Burmese social norms. Ordinary persons are also
sometimes possessed by nats at these festivals and have to undergo
rites of exorcism. In contrast to the generally calm and gentle na-
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NATS • 327

ture of Buddhist observances, nat-pwe are loud, dissolute, and

sometimes violent.
Nat festivals are popular throughout Burma, sometimes held in
conjunction with shinbyu ceremonies, showing the coexistence of
nat worship and Buddhism. The biggest and most popular is held in
summer at Taungbyone, just north of Mandalay, where thousands of
devotees gather for six days of wild celebration. Mount Popa is also
the site of nat festivals, in spring and winter. Like other aspects of nat
worship, nat-pwe are tolerated in Buddhist Burma but are often
avoided by respectable people, who find the wild atmosphere unset-
tling. See also PWE.

NATS. Sometimes naq or na’, spirits or gods, encompassing a wide va-

riety of divine or supernatural beings in traditional Burmese religion.
Although nat worship antedates the establishment of Theravada Bud-
dhism as the state religion by King Anawrahta in the 11th century,
and in some cases can be equated with animism, it has coexisted,
though in a subordinate position, with Burma’s dominant religion.
Nats include the following categories, which are not mutually ex-
clusive: gods borrowed from Indian mythology, including Thagya
Min, the king of the gods who is the protector of the Buddhist reli-
gion, and Thurathadi (Saraswati), goddess of learning, to whom stu-
dents pray to pass examinations; spirits of nature, such as those in-
habiting rivers, storms, and trees (especially banyan trees); spirits
associated with human activities, such as the construction of houses
or cultivation of rice; and spirit guardians of specific places or terri-
tories. In addition, the spirits of dead persons are often recognized as
nats.
The pantheon of Thirty-seven Nats established by Anawrahta
consists of legendary or historical figures, who usually met violent
(“green”) or tragic deaths, often at the hands of a king. Because of the
nature of their demise, they could not be reincarnated and roamed the
world at large, causing havoc. To appease them, the king instituted a
state-supported cult that transformed them into protective deities.
Their images were placed on the platform of the Shwezigon Pagoda.
Their number, 36, reflected Hindu cosmology, to which Anawrahta
added Thagya Min, to make 37. In this way, Anawrahta and his suc-
cessors sought to keep nat worship under state control. Over time, the
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328 • NAVY

individual figures in the nat pantheon have changed, but the number
has remained the same. Festivals (nat-pwe) are held in their honor,
especially around Pagan (Bagan) and Mandalay. The most impor-
tant center of nat worship is Mount Popa, in Mandalay Division.
Nat shrines are found in villages, at the entrance to pagodas, and
in Burmese households, where offerings are made to an unhusked co-
conut, which is hung in an elevated position and represents Min Ma-
hagiri, one of the 37 nats who was especially esteemed by King
Kyanzittha. Statues of nats, such as the Sule Nat at the Sule Pagoda
in Rangoon (Yangon), associated with the legendary founding of the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, are a prominent feature of Burmese religious
art (though of less importance than Buddha images).
Belief in nats is fluid, like Western belief in ghosts, and many
Burmese today still believe that the place where a person met a vio-
lent death is haunted by a dangerous nat who must be placated with
offerings. In 1998, it was said that nats caused strange phenomena
(the sounds of disembodied screams, the appearance of blood) near
the Myeinigone Market in Rangoon, the site of a massacre of student
demonstrators by the Riot Police in June 1988. See also
MYEINIGONE MARKET INCIDENT.

NAVY (TATMADAW YAY). One of the three services of the Tat-

madaw, its commander in chief is a (three-star) lieutenant general.
Unlike some of its neighbors in Southeast Asia, Burma does not have
a strong maritime tradition. Yet its long coastline and many islands
make it vulnerable to piracy and poaching of marine resources by for-
eign parties. After 1988, the Navy expanded significantly in terms of
personnel (16,000 by 2000, compared to 7,000 in 1988), equipment,
mostly acquired from abroad (including Chinese- and Yugoslavian-
made coastal patrol boats), and coastal bases, some of which were re-
portedly modernized in the 1990s with Chinese assistance. It has re-
sponsibility for defending both coastal and riverine areas, and during
times of emergency the civilian Merchant Marine can be placed un-
der naval (or military) command. But compared to the Army, its po-
litical influence, budgets, and manpower remain severely limited.
Navy regional commands are located at Rangoon (Yangon), Moul-
mein (Mawlamyine), Mergui (Myeik), Hainggyi Island, and Sittwe
(Sittway).
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NE WIN • 329

NAW SENG (1922–1972). A Kachin military commander who served

with distinction in the Northern Kachin Levies during World War
II and was twice decorated by the British. In 1946, he became a cap-
tain in the First Kachin Rifles and fought Communist Party of
Burma (CPB) rebels in 1948, earning himself the reputation of be-
ing the “terror” of communists who had established a base at Pyin-
mana in southern Mandalay Division. In February 1949, however,
he joined forces with the Karen National Union uprising against
the government of Prime Minister U Nu, apparently because his
harsh treatment of Burman (Bamar) communist rebels had aroused
criticism in government circles and because he could not bear to
fight against fellow Christian Karens (Kayins). In March, his forces
briefly occupied Mandalay and then moved south, hoping to assist
KNU-affiliated Karen National Defence Organization troops fight-
ing at Insein (now Insein Township) adjacent to Rangoon (Yan-
gon). They reached Pegu (Bago) but then retreated northward to
Shan State. Naw Seng hoped to establish the independence of the
Kachins from the Union of Burma, and his Pawngyawng National
Defence Force (Pawngyawng being the name of the republic he
wanted to establish), organized in November 1949, was the first
Kachin antigovernment insurgency. In 1950, he crossed the border
into China, where he remained until January 1968, when he returned
to northern Shan State as head of the CPB’s Northeastern Command.
To his dismay, he had to fight not only the Tatmadaw but also the
anticommunist Kachin Independence Army. He died in March
1972, reportedly having “fallen off his horse” (or a cliff), although
the demise of this colorful and much-admired rebel leader might
have been ordered by the CPB, who considered him too independent
and an overly zealous Kachin patriot.

NE WIN (SHU MAUNG, 1911–2002). Wartime comrade of Aung

San, commander in chief of Burma’s armed forces from 1949 to
1972, and the country’s leader during the Caretaker Government
period (1958–1960) and the 26-year-long Burma Socialist Pro-
gramme Party era (1962–1988). Born on March 14, 1911, in
Paungdale, near Prome (Pyay) in what is now Pegu (Bago) Divi-
sion, Shu Maung was of mixed Chinese–Burmese ancestry. Drop-
ping out of Rangoon (Yangon) University in 1931, he joined the
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330 • NE WIN

Dobama Asiayone and was a member of its right-wing faction, led

by Ba Sein and Tun Oke. Recruited as one of the Thirty Comrades
by Aung San, the Minami Kikan placed him in command of a unit
of the Burma Independence Army (BIA) responsible for sabotage
behind enemy lines. Following the establishment of the BIA in De-
cember 1941, he adopted the nom de guerre Ne Win, meaning “the
brightness of sun.” When Japan granted Burma nominal indepen-
dence in August 1943, he was appointed commander in chief of the
Burma National Army and joined Defense Minister Aung San in
resisting the Japanese after March 27, 1945.
Ne Win succeeded General Smith Dun as commander in chief of
independent Burma’s armed forces following the Karen National
Union uprising in January 1949. Between 1949 and 1950, the rump
of the Tatmadaw that he commanded, which remained loyal to the
central government, proved indispensable in preventing the over-
throw of Prime Minister U Nu’s government by ethnic minority and
communist insurgents. Ne Win solidified his control over the Tat-
madaw by forging close ties with subordinate officers and presided
over the “Burmanization” of its top ranks. He placed loyal subordi-
nates from his old regiment, the Fourth Burma Rifles, in positions
of special responsibility. When the ruling united front, the Anti-
Fascist People’s Freedom League, split into two factions in 1958,
parliament passed legislation enabling Ne Win to assume the prime
ministership as head of the Caretaker Government, which remained
in power from October 1958 to April 1960. This period proved to
be a dress rehearsal for the military regime he established on March
2, 1962, overthrowing U Nu and establishing the Revolutionary
Council with himself as chairman, a post he held until the Socialist
Republic of the Union of Burma was established in 1974 and he be-
came its president.
In July 1962, Ne Win established the Burma Socialist Programme
Party (BSPP), which became the country’s only legal party in 1964.
He implemented Eastern European–style socialist policies (the
“Burmese Road to Socialism”) and made military officers respon-
sible for public administration and economic management. He is
largely blamed for presiding over Burma’s decline from being one of
Southeast Asia’s richest and most promising economies to being one
of its poorest, and for having isolated the country culturally as well
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NE WIN, LEGACY OF • 331

as economically from the international community. He resigned as

president of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma in 1981 but
remained chairman of the BSPP until retiring from that post on July
23, 1988.
Though an adherent of non-Marxist socialism and advocate of the
separation of religion and the state like Aung San, Ne Win’s ruling
style, dictatorial and personal in the classical Southeast Asian sense,
belied his ambition to establish a modern “socialist democracy.”
Known by his people as “The Old Man” or “Number One,” he often
adopted the trappings of old Burman kings; regarded the nation’s nat-
ural resources, especially gemstones, as his private property; and ter-
rorized his subordinates with a violent temper. He was addicted to
numerology and yedaya (occult practices), and had a scandalous pri-
vate life. His style of diplomacy was largely based on personal ties
rather than a coherent foreign policy, and he enjoyed close and mu-
tually profitable relations with officials and private citizens in Japan,
West Germany, and other countries. He ruthlessly suppressed all
forms of dissent, especially students and ethnic minorities, and his
Military Intelligence service, headed after 1983 by Khin Nyunt,
kept a close eye on the population.
After his 1988 retirement, there was speculation that he continued
to manipulate politics from behind the scenes. Although this might
have been true in the initial years of the State Law and Order
Restoration Council junta, by the mid-1990s, he largely devoted
himself to meditation and other religious practices, holding a Bud-
dhist ceremony with old BSPP comrades in attendance on his 90th
birthday in 1999. The alleged involvement of his daughter Sanda
Win, his son-in-law, and three grandsons in a coup d’état attempt,
uncovered in March 2002, marked the eclipse of his prestige. When
he died on December 5, 2002, there was no state funeral, and his
passing was only briefly mentioned in the state-run media.

NE WIN, LEGACY OF. Although eulogized by his biographer, Dr.

Maung Maung, for having almost single-handedly defended the
country’s national unity from communists, ethnic minority sepa-
ratists, and street mobs, Ne Win’s legacy is generally cast in highly
negative terms. Continuities between the Ne Win era (1962–1988)
and those of the State Law and Order Restoration Council
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332 • NEW DEMOCRATIC ARMY

(SLORC, 1988–1997) and the State Peace and Development

Council (SPDC, 1997– ) include exclusive control of essential sec-
tors of the economy by a Tatmadaw élite, either through state so-
cialism or state capitalism, undermining competition and the ability
of the economy to grow; a flourishing black market, including the
drug economy; structural corruption; lack of the rule of law; routine
abuses of power; an overly personal style of rule and concentration
of power in a single “strongman” or group of “strongmen”; Burman
(Bamar) chauvinism at the expense of non-Burman minorities; and
Burma’s continued cultural and social isolation despite the economic
liberalization policies adopted in 1988 by the SLORC. Ne Win closed
down Burma’s civil society, and it has not been allowed to revive un-
der his successors.
By being insulated from, or insulating himself from, dissenting or
objective points of view and demanding unquestioning loyalty, Ne
Win ensured mediocrity in personnel and policy making (reflected in
the Burmese saying lukaun lutaw, “good people are better than smart
people”), in contrast to his authoritarian counterparts in other Asian
countries, such as Suharto in Indonesia and Park Chung-hee in South
Korea, who gave foreign-educated economic planners (technocrats)
considerable autonomy. Although in recent years the SPDC leader-
ship has tried to distance itself from the Ne Win legacy, especially
mistakes made in economic policy, their very similar worldviews and
policies continue to hinder democratization and economic develop-
ment.

NEW DEMOCRATIC ARMY (NDA). A cease-fire armed group

formed after the breakup of the Communist Party of Burma in
1989, which is based in Kachin State. It contains only a few hundred
armed men, and trades in forest products and drugs across the bor-
der with China.

NEW LIGHT OF MYANMAR (MYANMA ALIN ). The official news-

paper of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), pub-
lished by the Ministry of Information. Until a name change in 1993,
it was known as the Working People’s Daily (Loketha Pyithu Nezin),
established by the Revolutionary Council in 1963 with editions in
both English and the Burmese (Myanmar) language. During the
Burma Socialist Programme Party era (1962–1988), it was one of
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NEW TOWNS • 333

the few mass media outlets in Burma. Myanma Alin, named for a
colonial-era vernacular publication, also has dual Burmese–English
editions. Over the years, the newspaper’s content has scarcely varied:
Government slogans are run across the top of the front page, visits of
high-ranking SPDC officials overseas or to various parts of the coun-
try are carefully noted, and there are feature articles on the military
regime’s latest political agenda, for example, in 2004, popular resist-
ance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, reflecting government hostility
generated by Washington’s sanctions. Its circulation (around 14,000)
is limited, and its stodgy, socialist-era format contrasts starkly with a
newer progovernment publication, the glossy Myanmar Times and
Business Review.

NEW MON STATE PARTY (NMSP). Established in July 1958 by

Nai Shwe Kyin; claims to represent the Mons and has operated in ru-
ral areas around Moulmein (Mawlamyine), along the shore of the
Andaman Sea and on the Thai–Burma border. Its armed force,
swelled by students who went underground after the 1963 peace
talks, was 1,000 in 1971 and around 1,500 in the late 1980s. The
NMSP split into two factions, led by Nai Shwe Kyin and Nai Nol Lar,
in 1981, but they were reunited in 1987. In 1990, the party claimed
that it controlled four districts, around Thaton, Moulmein
(Mawlamyine), Tavoy (Dawei), and Mergui (Myeik).
The New Mon State Party has been a member of the National
Democratic Front and the Democratic Alliance of Burma. Its armed
force is now known as the Mon National Liberation Army. The
NMSP signed a cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council in June 1995, in part because of pressure from Thai-
land and because the fall of Manerplaw left it dangerously exposed
to Tatmadaw attacks. As a cease-fire group, it enjoys only limited
independence but continues in its efforts to promote the interests of
the Mon community. A 2001 breakaway faction, the Hongsawatoi
Restoration Party, has refused to recognize the cease-fire. When Nai
Shwe Kyin died in March 2003, he was succeeded as NMSP presi-
dent by Nai Htin. See also ALL RAMANYA MON ASSOCIATION
(ARMA); THREE PAGODAS PASS.

NEW TOWNS (RANGOON). Although new towns or satellite towns

(Thaketa, North and South Okkalapa) were established by the
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334 • NIBBANA

Caretaker Government between 1958 and 1960, the State Law and
Order Restoration Council (SLORC) carried out a more ambitious
program of expanding the boundaries of Rangoon (Yangon) by es-
tablishing 10 new towns, of which the three largest are Hlaing Tha-
yar, Shwepyithar, and Dagon Myothit (further divided into North,
East, and South Dagon). These new settlements incorporated territo-
ries lying west of the Hlaing River and east of Ngamoeyeik Creek,
the city’s traditional boundaries. As many as 450,000–500,000 peo-
ple moved, or were moved, to these new towns (other estimates are
lower). They included a large number of persons subject to forced re-
location, not only squatters but also people who had supported the
demonstrations of Democracy Summer and had to rebuild their
homes in remote areas lacking basic amenities. Although some peo-
ple relocated voluntarily, for example, civil servants who were
granted parcels of land and wealthy people who bought houses in
luxury developments, the SLORC’s establishment of the new towns
reflects the weakness of individual property rights in Burma, where
the state is recognized as having ultimate authority over land. See
also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA; YANGON CITY DEVELOP-
MENT COMMITTEE.

NIBBANA. Neikban in Burmese, known as nirvana in English; the ul-

timate goal of Buddhism, meaning liberation from samsara or the
cycle of rebirth and suffering. The original meaning of the term is the
“extinguishing” of the flame of life, like a candle snuffed out. The
concept is extremely difficult for even learned Buddhists to under-
stand, and most ordinary believers in Burma are more attracted by the
prospect of a pleasant rebirth (perhaps as a rich man or a celestial be-
ing) or by the idea of nibbana as simply a serene paradise. Gotama
Buddha was able to pass into nibbana at death, after achieving En-
lightenment. Nibbana stands above the 31 levels of existence, in-
cluding hell, animal life, the human world, and the realms of gods
and incorporeal celestial beings, which comprise Buddhist cosmol-
ogy. See also KAMMA; KUTHO.

NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs) IN BURMA.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international non-
governmental organizations (INGOs) have been deeply involved in
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NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS) IN BURMA • 335

Burma since the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized
power in 1988. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and
other well-known INGOs began drawing world attention to the new
regime’s human rights abuses, and new NGOs were established by
Burmese exiles and their overseas supporters, including the Free Burma
Coalition, the Burma Project of the Soros Foundation, ALTSEAN-
Burma, the Karen Human Rights Group, and the Shan Human Rights
Foundation. Based in neighboring countries, such as Thailand, Western
countries, or Japan, these groups have been successful in using infor-
mation technology, such as the Internet, to increase awareness of a
country that previously was largely ignored by the international com-
munity. Some of them have also played a role in getting Western gov-
ernments to enact sanctions against the military regime. Such NGOs as
the Burmese Relief Centre and the Burma Border Consortium assist
Burmese refugees in Thailand.
Other NGOs or INGOs have operated inside the country since the
early 1990s, providing assistance in public health, family planning,
and community development. Narcotics and the AIDS epidemic have
been special areas of concern. Such groups include Médecins sans
Frontières-Holland, Médecins du Monde, CARE Myanmar, World
Vision Myanmar, Save the Children Fund (United Kingdom and
United States), Population Services International, and the Adventist
Development and Relief Agency. NGOs are required to sign a formal
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a government agency,
usually the Ministry of Health, and are expected to work closely with
local Peace and Development Councils, the Union Solidarity and
Development Association, and GONGOS (government-organized
nongovernmental organizations), such as the Myanmar Maternal
and Child Welfare Association, Myanmar Medical Association, and
Myanmar Anti-Narcotic Association. They also must avoid involve-
ment of any kind that the State Peace and Development Council re-
gards as “political,” including contacts with the National League for
Democracy (NLD).
After her release from house arrest in 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi
asked that NGOs working in Burma consult with the NLD, a condi-
tion that, given the restrictions imposed by the regime, is impossible
for them to satisfy; in a 1998 interview, she said that NGOs should
not work inside Burma at all, but rather focus their resources on
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336 • NORDIC COUNTRIES AND BURMA

helping refugees in neighboring countries. The controversy over the

legitimacy of NGO/INGO work inside Burma focuses on two issues:
whether the aid given by these groups benefits the SPDC regime
more than the people, and whether people in local communities can
be meaningfully helped as long as the military-dominated power
structure remains unchanged. See also UNITED NATIONS IN
BURMA.

NORDIC COUNTRIES AND BURMA. Although they do not have

significant historical ties with Burma, the nordic countries (Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, and Finland) have been particularly active in pro-
viding the Burmese prodemocracy movement with moral and material
support, aiding Burmese refugees, and calling upon the post-1988 mil-
itary regime to recognize the results of the General Election of May
27, 1990. In 1991, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace
Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi; the Norwegian government established
ties with the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
after it was set up in late 1990 and has provided funding for the Dem-
ocratic Voice of Burma radio station, which broadcasts Burmese pro-
grams from Norway. Although Sweden and Denmark coordinate their
Burma policies with those of the European Union, the Swedish for-
eign minister, the late Anna Lindh, was strongly committed to focusing
international attention on the Burma crisis. In the 1990s, Sweden
cosponsored resolutions in the General Assembly of the United Na-
tions condemning the post-1988 military regime’s violations of hu-
man rights. Nongovernmental organizations in all four countries
have been active in addressing Burma-related issues.

NU, U (THAKIN NU) (1907–1995). Independent Burma’s first prime

minister, who began his political career as a student activist during the
1930s. Born on May 25, 1907, in Wakema, Myaungmya (My-
oungmya) District south of Bassein (Pathein), he was a graduate of
Rangoon (Yangon) University. His election to the presidency of the
Rangoon University Students Union (RUSU) in 1935 ensured control
of the organization by radicals. The following year, his expulsion from
the school, along with Aung San, led to the student strike of Febru-
ary–May. This made both Nu and Aung San figures of importance on
the national political scene. In 1937, he joined the Dobama Asiayone
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NU, U • 337

or Thakin Party (thus, he was widely known as “Thakin Nu”) and was
also a founder of the Nagani Book Club. Interned by the British be-
tween 1940 and 1942, he served as foreign minister in the pro-Japanese
wartime government of Dr. Ba Maw from 1943 to 1945. At war’s end,
he was vice president of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
(AFPFL) and succeeded to the presidency following the assassination
of Aung San on July 19, 1947, negotiating the Nu–Attlee Agreement
with the British government in October of that year.
U Nu was prime minister during the periods 1948–1956,
1957–1958, and 1960–1962. His political vision encompassed non-
Marxist socialism, construction of a modern welfare state, and Bud-
dhism. Though he ceded power to General Ne Win’s Caretaker
Government in October 1958, his Pyidaungsu (Union) Party won
the February 1960 election, and Burma had two more years of civil-
ian government under his prime ministership.
Between 1954 and 1956, U Nu sponsored the Sixth Great Bud-
dhist Council, on the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha’s attain-
ment of nibbana (nirvana), in which Buddhist monks and lay schol-
ars produced an authoritative version of the Tipitaka (Buddhist
scriptures). Though a strong backer of religious tolerance, U Nu pro-
posed that Buddhism be made the state religion, a measure popular
with the Burman (Bamar) voters that probably assured his 1960
election victory. A constitutional amendment to this effect was passed
in August 1961, but it alienated religious minorities, including Chris-
tians among the Kachins and other border area nationalities. U Nu’s
hosting of the Federal Seminar in February 1962, however, reflected
his willingness to talk with ethnic minority leaders about granting the
border area states more autonomy. U Nu’s government was over-
thrown in the coup d’état of March 2, 1962, and he and other politi-
cal leaders were imprisoned.
U Nu was able to leave Burma in 1969 after his participation in the
Internal Unity Advisory Board (IUAB), and headed an anti-Ne Win
insurgency, the National United Liberation Front, based in Thailand.
This proved ineffectual, and he quit as chairman in 1972, returning to
Burma in 1980 following Ne Win’s announcement of a general
amnesty. Though retired from political life and devoting himself to re-
ligion, he announced a “parallel government” on September 9, 1988,
establishing his own cabinet with himself as prime minister, on the
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338 • NU–ATTLEE AGREEMENT

grounds that following the 1962 coup d’état the Constitution of 1947
had never been formally abrogated. Because of his refusal to dissolve
the parallel government, the State Law and Order Restoration
Council kept him under house arrest from December 1989 to April
1992. His party, the League for Democracy and Peace, failed to win a
seat in the General Election of May 27, 1990. He died on February
14, 1995.
U Nu was internationally respected as one of the founders of the
Non-Aligned Movement. At home, he always preferred discussion to
the use of brute force, and his government, though not without its
flaws, was the most democratic Burma ever experienced.

NU–ATTLEE AGREEMENT. Officially, the “Treaty between the

Government of the United Kingdom and the Provisional Government
of Burma Regarding the Recognition of Burmese Independence and
Related Matters,” signed by U Nu and Prime Minister Clement At-
tlee on October 17, 1947, in London. Defense and financial agree-
ments were also signed. The British Parliament passed the Burma In-
dependence Bill on December 10, 1947, and U Nu’s government
chose January 4, 1948, as an auspicious date for the ending of British
rule. See also AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREEMENT.

NUMEROLOGY. The belief that certain numbers are auspicious or in-

auspicious, widespread in Burma. For example, if the number of pas-
sengers in a bus is considered unlucky, the driver may place a rock in
the vehicle, representing an additional passenger. Ne Win was well
known for his belief that the number 9 was lucky. This was reflected
in his demonetization order of September 1987, replacing old kyat
notes with denominations of 45 and 90; the power seizure by the
State Law and Order Restoration Council, occurring on Septem-
ber 18 (1 ⫹ 8 ⫽ 9), 1988; and the date of the General Election of
March 27, 1990 (2 ⫹ 7 ⫽ 9). The rather unrealistic figure that the
military government gives for the number of national ethnic groups,
135 (1 ⫹ 3 ⫹ 5 ⫽ 9), may also reflect this obsession. The Four
Eights (8.8.88) Movement began on August 8, 1988, because oppo-
sitionists believed that eight is an inauspicious number for rulers, rep-
resenting anarchy and destruction of the old order. See also AS-
TROLOGY; YEDAYA.
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OFFICE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES • 339

NUNS, BUDDHIST. Although Gotama Buddha established an order

of nuns (bhikkuni) during his lifetime, the Sangha of Burma and
other Theravada Buddhist countries does not include women, since
the ordination rites for them were lost to the Theravada tradition. In-
scriptions indicate that there may have been ordained nuns during the
Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty.
Despite the lack of equal status with monks in modern Burma,
many women become ascetics (often referred to as sila-shin, “own-
ers of good moral conduct,” or dasa-sila, “observers of the 10 pre-
cepts”), shaving their heads and wearing pink robes. They are esti-
mated to number around 30,000 (compared to 300,000 monks), and
large communities of nuns live in Sagaing and Mingun. Their activ-
ities are essentially the same as male monks: meditation and study
of the Pali Canon. Women are still ordained as nuns in Mahayana
Buddhist countries, such as China and Korea, and some Buddhists
have suggested that the Mahayana rites could be used to start a new
order of bhikkuni in Burma and other Theravada countries.

–O–

OFFICE OF STRATEGIC STUDIES (OSS). Widely described as

a “think tank” collecting information on matters of domestic and
international importance to the State Peace and Development
Council regime, the OSS, a Military Intelligence organ, was es-
tablished in the mid-1990s and had five areas of responsibility: in-
ternational issues, narcotics, security, ethnic minority affairs, and
science and the environment. It organized and participated in in-
ternational conferences involving academic and official partici-
pants from countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Na-
tions (ASEAN) and beyond. Although formally superior to the
Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence within the Ministry
of Defense hierarchy, its importance had declined even before the
purge of Military Intelligence head Khin Nyunt in October 2004.
Many observers believe the OSS was set up to give Khin Nyunt a
strategic command, justifying his promotion to lieutenant general
in 1994. See also MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, ORGANIZA-
TION OF.
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340 • OFFICERS’ TRAINING SCHOOL

OFFICERS’ TRAINING SCHOOL (OTS). One of Burma’s two

main institutions for training commissioned officers, the other being
the Defence Services Academy. Established in 1948, it is located in
Bahtoo. Since 1988, most OTS cadets have been university graduates,
with a smaller number of noncommissioned officers without college
degrees. The course lasts for nine months, and almost all graduates
receive commissions from the Army. Prominent OTS graduates have
included Senior General Than Shwe and former SPDC Secretary-1
and prime minister Khin Nyunt. See also TATMADAW.

OIL AND NATURAL GAS. Burma possesses abundant oil and natu-
ral gas resources, located both onshore and offshore. During the
Konbaung Dynasty, “earth oil” was extracted from wells around
Yenangyaung (Yaynangyoung), in present-day Magwe (Magway)
Division. The wells were operated by twinza, “well-eaters,” whose
usufruct right was hereditary. During the British colonial period, the
Burmah Oil Company, a Scottish-owned corporation, extracted oil
from wells at Yenangyaung, Myingyan, and Chauk, and Burma ex-
ported oil products to India. The company continued its operations
until it was nationalized by the Burma Socialist Programme Party
regime in the 1960s. During the socialist period, the energy sector lan-
guished. Although attempts were made to increase oil production and
discover new offshore fields with the cooperation of foreign oil com-
panies, sustained increases in production could not be achieved. Af-
ter the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) seized
power in September 1988, socialist economic policies were dropped
and the way cleared to exploit hydrocarbon resources with the full
participation of foreign oil companies. Beginning in 1989, 18 Euro-
pean, American, and Japanese companies paid large “signature
bonuses” to the SLORC to do onshore exploration from Mon State
in the south to Sagaing Division in the north, but they failed to find
major new deposits. Most had quit the country by 1993, after spend-
ing hundreds of millions of dollars. Burma became increasingly de-
pendent on oil imports, and much locally produced oil was sold on
the black market.
Offshore, deposits of natural gas proved more promising. The
US$1.2 billion Yadana Pipeline Project in the Andaman Sea be-
came the largest foreign investment in Burma; this joint venture
comprising the Myanmar Oil and Natural Gas Enterprise (MOGE),
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OIL FIELD WORKERS’ STRIKE • 341

Total of France, Unocal of the United States, and the Petroleum Au-
thority of Thailand to export natural gas to Thailand has gained the
Burmese government as much as US$400 million in annual revenues.
A second field, Yetagun, is also being developed. In early 2004, it was
announced that a third natural gas field, called the “Shwe [Golden]
Prospect,” located off the coast of Arakan (Rakhine) State in the
Bay of Bengal, was exploited by a consortium of MOGE, South Ko-
rean, and Indian energy firms. It will provide India with natural gas
and bring the State Peace and Development Council between
US$800 million and US$3 billion in yearly revenue.
Energy exports are ideal sources of hard currency for the SPDC be-
cause the extraction of hydrocarbons takes place in remote areas off-
shore, has—unlike the establishment of new manufacturing industry—
almost no impact on society in central Burma, and is completely under
the control of MOGE and its foreign partners. Cases of forced labor
and forced relocation associated with the Yadana and Yetagun projects
have raised international concern, and many activists fear that con-
struction of a pipeline to India in connection with the Shwe Prospect
will result in similar hardship for people in western Burma. See also
OIL FIELD WORKERS’ STRIKE.

OIL FIELD WORKERS’ STRIKE (1938). Sparked by a dispute over

holidays between Burmese oil field workers at wells at Chauk and
Yenaungyaung (Yaynangyoung) and the British-owned Burmah Oil
Company, the strike, which began in January 1938, was organized by
local branches of the Dobama Asiayone and soon developed into a
movement with strong political and anticolonial overtones. But most of
the 12,000 laborers involved were back at work by October 1938, and
strike leaders sought to revive the movement by organizing a 400-mile
march from the oil fields to Rangoon (Yangon) by way of Magwe
(Magway) in the following month. On January 8, 1939, the marchers
arrived at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and their supporters, including
workers at the Syriam (Thanlyin) oil refinery, farmers, firemen, bus
drivers, as well as members of the Sangha, women’s groups, tats, and
Rangoon University Students Union, held massive demonstrations,
although the authorities thwarted a Dobama-organized general strike.
The oil field strike was the beginning of the modern labor movement
in Burma, witnessing the establishment of the All Burma Trade Union
Congress. Known as the “1300 Revolution” (1938–1939 was the year
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342 • OKKALAPA, NORTH AND SOUTH

1300 in the Burmese Era), it also anticipated the massive prodemoc-

racy demonstrations of 1988, the “1350 Revolution,” in which huge
crowds of townspeople joined with activists to protest the Ne Win gov-
ernment. See also AUNG GYAW, BO.

OKKALAPA, NORTH AND SOUTH. New townships in Rangoon

(Yangon), established during the Caretaker Government period of
General Ne Win (1958–1960). They are located to the north and
northeast of downtown Rangoon. To deal with the problems of squat-
ters and overcrowding in the city center, Rangoon’s new mayor, a
military officer, relocated as many as 170,000 squatters by mid-1959,
of whom 75,647 and 64,441 were placed in North and South
Okkalapa, respectively. During Democracy Summer in 1988, the
largely poor and working-class population of these townships bitterly
resisted the Tatmadaw, suffering many casualties; residents of North
Okkalapa built a memorial to the martyrs of the Four Eights Move-
ment, which was torn down after the State Law and Order
Restoration Council seized power on September 18, 1988. See also
NEW TOWNS (RANGOON); THAKETA.

OPIUM. Burma’s most profitable cash crop. Opium and its derivatives,
especially heroin, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue
annually. Raw opium latex is extracted from the pods of the opium
poppy (Papaver somniferum), which is cultivated in remote, hilly
parts of Shan and Kachin States. Because of soil and climatic condi-
tions, the most productive areas are the Wa District and Kokang, both
located along the border with China east of the Salween (Thanlwin)
River, though areas close to the border with Thailand also account
for significant production. For generations, local farmers have found
that growing opium is more profitable than other crops, although their
income is small compared to the profits made by middlemen and the
leaders of drug-financed armed groups, such as the former “kings of
the Golden Triangle,” Lo Hsing-han and Khun Sa. After the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China forcefully ended opium production and con-
sumption inside its borders, the Golden Triangle—consisting of east-
ern Burma, northern Thailand, and Laos—supplied international
demand for illicit opiates. The demand for heroin increased during the
Vietnam War, when it was used widely by U.S. troops stationed in
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OPIUM • 343

Southeast Asia. Drug trafficking routes connected growing and refin-

ing areas in Shan and Kachin States with international markets by way
of Thailand, but in the 1990s traffickers opened new routes through
China’s Yunnan Province—creating a Chinese drug-abuse problem
comparable to that of the period before 1949. Injection of heroin has
contributed to a massive AIDS epidemic, both in Burma and neigh-
boring countries.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Burma vies with Afghanistan
for the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest producer and
exporter of opiates (in other parts of the Golden Triangle, poppy cul-
tivation has been largely suppressed in northern Thailand, and most
Laotian opium is grown for local use). Production increased during
the early and mid-1990s, in part because cease-fires gave armed
groups, such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA), greater free-
dom to expand poppy cultivation; according to the U.S. Department
of State, production reached a high of 2,560 metric tons of opium in
1996, compared to 1,100 metric tons in 1986. However, a steady de-
crease in production has occurred since 1996, falling to 865 metric
tons in 2001. Acreage under poppy cultivation has also decreased
substantially. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
claims that the decline shows the effectiveness of its drug eradica-
tion policies. In Kokang, the SPDC authorities have been able to
carry out drug-eradication programs, especially following a mid-
1990s power struggle among leaders of the Myanmar National
Democratic Alliance Army/Party that gravely weakened this
armed group. The UWSA, however, is much stronger, and has suc-
ceeded in keeping central government officials out of its territories.
Nevertheless, the UWSA leadership promised to end poppy cultiva-
tion by 2005. The SPDC pledges to eradicate opium production na-
tionwide by 2014.
Although there is no hard evidence that top leaders of the SPDC
are directly involved in the drug economy, drug exports generate
huge profits that have been “laundered” through the regular econ-
omy. Many “new capitalists” in Rangoon (Yangon) have close ties
to drug-producing areas, including the retired Lo Hsing-han and his
son, Stephen Law. Among foreign countries, especially the United
States, there is sharp disagreement over whether the military regime
is sincerely committed to drug eradication. Another problem is that
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344 • ORWELL, GEORGE

neither the government nor the ethnic armed groups have seriously
addressed the problem of the massive outflow of Burma-produced
amphetamines into Thailand. See also DRUG ECONOMY.

ORWELL, GEORGE (PSEUDONYM OF ERIC BLAIR, 1903–

1950). The author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, whose
first novel, Burmese Days, and essays, such as “A Hanging” and
“Shooting an Elephant,” reflected his experiences in Burma from
1922 to 1927 as a young officer of the Indian Imperial Police. Posted
to Myaungmya (Myoungmya), Twante, Insein (now Insein Town-
ship), Syriam (Thanlyin), Moulmein (Mawlamyine), and Katha (in
Upper Burma), he described his service as “five boring years within
the sound of bugles.” His view of colonialism—that it enslaved col-
onized and colonizer alike and involved unconscionable brutality—
evolved during this time. As a police officer dealing with criminal
cases, he became familiar with the darker side of empire and decided,
after returning to England in 1927, to quit the service and pursue a lit-
erary career. One of his earliest published essays, “A Hanging,” is an
eloquent critique of capital punishment based on his experience at a
colonial jail, probably at Moulmein. Burmese Days, first published in
the United States in October 1934, has such vividly drawn characters
that his British publisher, Gollancz, hesitated to publish it until
changes were made that reduced the possibility of libel (since then,
the American edition has been seen as authoritative). Apart from de-
scriptions of natural beauty, Burmese Days is unrelentingly dark, but
it is also probably the best novel in the English language about the
country. See also COLLIS, MAURICE.

OTTAMA, U (1897–1939). A pivotal figure in modern Burmese polit-

ical history, the first of the “political pongyis” members of the
Sangha who agitated against British colonial rule. A native of Sittwe
(Sittway) in Arakan (Rakhine), he went to Calcutta to study and
was deeply influenced by the ideas of the Indian National Congress.
He also resided in Japan, teaching Pali in Tokyo. Returning from
Japan in 1919, he became involved in the emerging political move-
ments of the time, writing articles for the nationalist newspaper,
Thuriya (The Sun), preaching in villages, establishing branches of
the wunthanu athin, and becoming famous for writing an open let-
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PA-AN • 345

ter to the governor of the province, Reginald Craddock, demanding

that he “go home.” While conservative monks avoided any involve-
ment in politics, U Ottama, an excellent public speaker, preached that
monks should not concentrate on achieving nibbana before the peo-
ple were freed from (colonial) oppression, an idea linking Buddhism
and politics that in different forms remained important until the Ne
Win era (1962–1988). In 1921, he was imprisoned for sedition after
making a political speech, receiving a harsh sentence that inspired
mass protests. Between that year and his death in 1939, he spent
much time in jail, and in his latter years endured illness, poverty, and
neglect at the hands of a younger generation of Burmese nationalists.
He was one of the founders of the General Council of Sangha Sam-
meggi and, inspired by the khadi movement led by Mahatma Gandhi
in India, advocated a boycott of British goods in favor of Burmese-
made ones, such as pinni or homespun cloth. See also DYARCHY;
WISARA, U.

OVERTURNING THE OFFERING BOWL. A boycott of Tat-

madaw personnel and their families by Buddhist monks in the sum-
mer of 1990. The shooting of two monks by the army in Mandalay
during a popular demonstration on August 8 and other heavy-handed
treatment of members of the Sangha by the authorities led senior ab-
bots at monasteries in Mandalay to declare in late August that monks
should not accept offerings given by soldiers or their families or par-
ticipate in army-sponsored ceremonies, a severe form of “excommu-
nication.” The protest spread from Mandalay to other cities, includ-
ing monasteries in Rangoon (Yangon), the “offering bowl” being
“overturned” so as not to accept offerings from soldiers. The State
Law and Order Restoration Council responded by raiding monas-
teries, arresting monk activists, and pressuring senior monks to can-
cel the boycott. See also YEDAYA.

–P–

PA-AN (HPA-AN). The capital of Karen (Kayin) State, with a popu-

lation estimated at 59,078 in 1996. Located on the eastern bank of the
Salween (Thanlwin) River, its inhabitants are Burmans (Bamars),
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346 • PACIFICATION OF BURMA

Mons, and Muslims, as well as Karens (Kayins). Nearby is the

monastery where the Thamanya Sayadaw resided until his death in
November 2003.

PACIFICATION OF BURMA (1885–1890). The Third Anglo-

Burmese War lasted only two weeks, from its outbreak on Novem-
ber 14, 1885, until the occupation of Mandalay on November 28.
But the countrywide uprisings that followed, involving thousands of
rural-based guerrillas, surprised the British, who expected that the
Burmese people would be grateful for having been liberated from the
tyranny of King Thibaw’s court. After being appointed chief com-
missioner of Burma in March 1886, Sir Charles Crosthwaithe
launched a “pacification” campaign, involving more than 40,000
British and Indian troops and military police, which succeeded in im-
posing order in most parts of Upper and Lower Burma by 1887
(British authority over border areas where Shans, Kachins, and
Chins resided was not effectively imposed until the end of the
decade). This was accomplished through the use of mobile cavalry
operations, summary executions, and the forced relocation of com-
munities that supported rebels, a method that was especially effective
in tearing up the social roots of guerrilla resistance. Some of the
harsher measures were criticized in the British newspapers and Par-
liament. Crosthwaithe claimed that when villagers were unwilling to
give information on rebel movements, “the only open course was to
make them fear us rather than the bandits.”
The intensity of the popular resistance and its appearance even in
areas that had been under British rule for decades, such as the delta
of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady River), was caused in Upper Burma
by the breakdown of governmental institutions during the last years
of Thibaw’s reign and the desire of bandit gangs to take advantage of
an anarchic situation. In Lower Burma, rebels were inspired by their
Upper Burma counterparts. But the uprising also had a patriotic
theme, especially when members of the royal family, such as the My-
inzaing Prince, a surviving son of King Mindon, were involved. In
the Shan States, the Limbin Confederacy, led by another royal
prince, first opposed King Thibaw, then the British. Patriotic move-
ments attempted to restore the traditional political and social order,
though not necessarily by a scion of the Konbaung Dynasty, and it
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PAGAN • 347

was often difficult to tell the difference between a bandit (dacoit) and
a patriotic leader. In some areas, members of the Sangha actively
aided the resistance, anticipating the anti-British “political pongyis”
of the 1920s. British use of Karen (Kayin) levies to suppress the re-
bellion, encouraged by some Christian missionaries, fueled ethnic
antagonism.
Although the uprisings were largely suppressed by 1890, the
British resorted to similar pacification measures in dealing with the
Saya San (Hsaya San) Rebellion of 1930–1932, the last major
Burmese rural uprising. See also ANGLO-CHIN WAR.

PADAUNGS. Also known as Kayans, an ethnic minority nationality re-

lated to the Karens (Kayins), speaking a Tibeto-Burman language,
who live for the most part in Kayah (Karenni) State. They are most
famous for their “giraffe women,” who place heavy copper or brass
rings around their necks (according to James G. Scott, weighing as
much as much as 50–60 pounds), depressing the rib cage and elon-
gating the neck. It is unclear why some (not all) Padaung women tra-
ditionally submitted to such disfigurement; some observers speculate
that it was to make them unappealing to the Burmans (Bamars),
who captured “hill tribe” women in slave raids. Since the British
colonial period, the “giraffe women” have been a popular trademark
of “exotic” Burma, and in recent years the tourist industry along the
Thai–Burma border has been accused of exploiting them for profit. A
Padaung armed group, the Kayan New Land Party, was founded in
1964 but signed a cease-fire with the State Law and Order
Restoration Council in July 1994.

PAGAN (BAGAN). One of the most famous archeological sites in

Southeast Asia, comparable to Angkor in Cambodia. It is located on
the east bank of a bend in the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River in
Mandalay Division. The Pagan region is bounded on the northeast
by the village of Nyaung-U and on the south by Pagan New Town
(Bagan Myothit). Over 2,000 pagodas, temples (pahto), umin (tem-
ples built to resemble caves), and other religious buildings, erected
mostly during the Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty between the 11th and
13th centuries, are found within a 41-square-kilometer (16-square-
mile) area, along with a roughly equal number of unexcavated and
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348 • PAGAN (BAGAN) DYNASTY

unidentified mounds. Most of the pagodas and temples are built of

brick. Wooden buildings of the old palace of the Pagan kings, on the
banks of the Irrawaddy, no longer exist.
The most notable monuments include the Shwezigon and Shwe-
sandaw Pagodas and the Manuha, Ananda, Dhammyangyi, and
Thatbyinnyu Temples. Over the centuries, the Burmese kept many of
these monuments in good repair. Modern archeological investigation
began in the British colonial era. Gordon H. Luce did extensive re-
search and writing on Pagan, as did the Burmese scholar Dr. Than
Tun.
An earthquake in 1975 damaged many of the monuments, but they
were largely restored with the assistance of UNESCO, which has des-
ignated Pagan a World Heritage Site. The post-1988 military govern-
ment has carried out ambitious alterations of many of the temples
since the mid-1990s, which have been criticized for being unfaithful
to their original design. Also criticized is a 60-meter (200-foot) con-
crete viewing tower, completed in 2005, which is seen as an eyesore
by locals and foreigners alike. The State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) regards Pagan as a major center for international
tourism, an important source of foreign exchange. According to jour-
nalistic reports, the SPDC has allowed the construction of a large ho-
tel in the area.
Pagan has long been a center for the production of high-quality
lacquerware. In 1990, the government forced residents of the old
village of Pagan, located among the monuments, to relocate to open
fields, now known as Pagan New Town, causing them considerable
hardship.

PAGAN (BAGAN) DYNASTY (1044–ca. 1325). Pagan (Bagan) was

a small Burman city-state established on the banks of the Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River in what is now Mandalay Division
in the ninth century CE. After King Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077) be-
came its ruler, he unified Upper and Lower Burma, establishing
what is sometimes called the “First Burmese (Myanmar) Empire.”
Pagan was one of the post powerful states in Mainland Southeast
Asia until its invasion by the armies of the Mongol emperor, Khubi-
lai Khan, in the late 13th century. Best known for its thousands of
pagodas and temples (pahto), it set the pattern for subsequent Bur-
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PAGODA • 349

man and Burmese states, especially its official sponsorship of Ther-

avada Buddhism and the Sangha. Its end is obscure: The last Pagan
monarchs, Sawnit (r. 1298–1325) and Uzana (1325), were apparently
powerless puppets, and with their passing the Burman capital was es-
tablished principally at Sagaing (1315–1364) and Ava (Inwa)
(1364–1555).
Monarchs of the Pagan Dynasty Year of Accession
Anawrahta 1044
Sawlu 1077
Kyanzittha 1084
Alaungsithu 1112
Narathu 1167
Naratheinhka 1170
Narapatisithu 1173
Nantaungmya 1210
Kyaswa 1234
Uzana 1250
Narathihapate 1254
Kyawswa 1287
Sawhnit 1298
Uzana 1325
Source: D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia. London: Macmillan, 1964.

Because the near-desert region in which Pagan is located had little

agricultural potential, the dynasty was economically dependent on a
complex of irrigated rice fields, especially at Kyaukse. See also
ANANDA PAHTO; DRY ZONE; KONBAUNG DYNASTY;
KYANZITTHA, KING; MANUHA TEMPLE; MONS; NARATHI-
HAPATE, KING; SHIN ARAHAN; SHWEZIGON PAGODA;
TOUNGOO DYNASTY.

PAGODA. A structure, usually built of bricks or stone, that houses holy

relics or other items associated with Buddhism. “Pagoda” is derived
from Sanskrit, meaning a relic shrine. In Burmese, the word zedi
(chedi), derived from Pali, or paya is used. Pagodas of all sizes are
found throughout the country and are one of the most distinct features
of the landscape. Stupa, also derived from Sanskrit, is a generally
synonymous term for pagoda used in English.
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350 • PAHTO

With some exceptions, such as the Botataung and the Maha

Vizaya Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon), pagodas in Burma are solid
structures. Temples containing an inner chamber or chambers where
devotees enter are commonly known in Burmese as pahto and are of-
ten likened to holy caves. Both pagodas and pahto are found in large
numbers at Pagan (Bagan).
Pagodas contain a sealed relic chamber, where items associated
with Gotama Buddha’s person, such as his hair, teeth, or bones, or
his personal possessions, are stored. The Shwe Dagon Pagoda in
Rangoon and the Shwemawdaw in Pegu (Bago) both are said to
contain hairs of the Buddha, and the Shwe Dagon also is said to con-
tain the possessions of three earlier Buddhas; thus, it is known as the
“four relic pagoda.” Buddhist scriptures, Buddha images, or replicas
of holy relics may be substituted for authenticated relics, usually the
case when ordinary villagers or merit-seeking individuals build their
own paya. The patron or builder of a pagoda, known as a paya-taga,
earns a great deal of merit (Burmese, kutho) from the enterprise,
while those who restore an old pagoda or donate jewels or other
treasure earn lesser amounts of merit.
The prototype for the pagoda is the stupa built at Sanchi in India in
the third century BCE, which is said to resemble an inverted alms
bowl. The bell-shaped pagoda form, most recognizable in stupas, such
as the Shwe Dagon, Shwemawdaw, and Shwesandaw in Prome
(Pyay), is traced to early Sri Lanka and some of the stupas found at
Pagan, such as the Shwezigon, built in the 11th and 12th centuries CE.
Buddhist pagodas are not the dwelling places of gods, and thus the
devotee does not worship there or address prayers to deities. But an
elaborate “pagoda religion” has emerged within Buddhism that
stresses the importance of venerating or paying respect to religious
sites and Buddha relics. Many pagodas, however, have nat shrines on
their premises, where people pray to supernatural beings for good
fortune or protection. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS.

PAHTO. A building, usually constructed of brick or stone, used for

Buddhist devotions or meditation. In English, pahto are often re-
ferred to as “temples.” In contrast to pagodas, which are usually
solid and contain holy relics, pahto have an interior chamber or
chambers that devotees can enter from the outside. They are often
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PANGLONG CONFERENCE • 351

built to resemble caves. The most important pahto are found at the
old royal capital of Pagan (Bagan). See also ARCHITECTURE, RE-
LIGIOUS.

PALAUNGS. An ethnic minority nationality who live in Shan State,

especially Tawngpeng state, where they had their own sawbwa dur-
ing the dynastic and colonial periods. They speak a Mon-Khmer lan-
guage, and their culture has been heavily influenced by neighboring
Shans (Tai). Living in upland areas, they have practiced slash-and-
burn (swidden) agriculture. They also cultivate tea leaves as a cash
crop, used to make pickled tea or let-hpet, which is popular with the
Burmans (Bamars). Although their indigenous religion is animist,
many Palaungs have become Buddhists. A Palaung armed group, the
Palaung State Liberation Organization/Army, operated in northern
Shan State, but in April 1991 it signed a cease-fire with the State
Law and Order Restoration Council; a small breakaway group, the
Palaung State Liberation Front, has rejected the truce.

PALI. The sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, in which the Tip-

itaka, also known as the Pali Canon, is written. It originally was a
Prakrit (vernacular or spoken) language of ancient India (Sanskrit
was India’s original literary language). Pali developed its own liter-
ary forms, which had a profound impact on the development of the
languages and literatures of Burma and its Southeast Asian neigh-
bors. Members of the Sangha study the Pali scriptures as part of their
religious devotions, and Burmese governments for many centuries
have sponsored examinations in which monks recite the Pali texts
from memory. Just as Western European languages are dependent on
Latin- and Greek-derived words for much of their vocabulary, Pali-
derived words are indispensable for modern users of the Burmese
(Myanmar) language.
The Pali Text Society, established in Britain in 1881, has translated
much of the Canon into English. The most widely known Pali text,
the Dhammapada, serves as an introduction to the teachings of Go-
tama Buddha.

PANGLONG CONFERENCE (1947). Although a first Panglong Con-

ference was held in March 1946, the term is generally used to refer to
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352 • PANTHAYS

the second conference, held February 7–12, 1947, at the town of the
same name in what is now Shan State. At the conference, Aung San
and leaders of the Kachin, Chin, and Shan communities agreed to a
basic framework for the Union of Burma, incorporating both Burma
Proper and the Frontier Areas. It was held against the background of
the January 1947 Aung San–Attlee Agreement, which recognized
the inclusion of the two regions in the new independent state. The con-
ference resulted in the agreement to establish Kachin State, recogni-
tion of the autonomy of the sawbwas within Shan State, and the in-
clusion of the Chins in Burma. Further commitments were made to
ensure fair and equal treatment of the Frontier Area peoples through
representation in the highest levels of government and economic de-
velopment. The Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry was charged
with further investigating minority sentiment—especially among the
smaller groups.
Aung San’s accommodating attitude at Panglong won the trust of
minority leaders, but the Karennis (Kayahs), who regarded their
states as essentially independent, did not commit themselves to join-
ing the Union, and the Karens (Kayins), who demanded a separate
state under British protection, refused to participate. The decisions
made at the conference were embodied in the Constitution of 1947,
which combined the features of both a federal and a unitary state. The
anniversary of the conclusion of the conference, February 12, is cel-
ebrated as Union Day. See also ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA,
BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD; NATIONAL UNITY.

PANTHAYS. Chinese Muslims from Yunnan Province, who migrated

in large numbers to the Burma–China border region following the
suppression by the Chinese government of a Muslim rebellion be-
tween 1856 and 1873. Many settled in the Wa district and Keng
Tung in Shan State, but lacking land of their own, they made their
living as mule drivers, leading caravans back and forth across the
Burma–China border and as far south as Rangoon (Yangon). In
Mandalay and other towns, the Panthays have built mosques to serve
their own community. Some observers believe the Panthays are de-
scended from Arab or Central Asian Muslims who were brought to
Yunnan by Khubilai Khan in the 13th century and intermarried with
local women but kept their Islamic faith. See also KOKANG.
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PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY PARTY • 353

PA-OS. An ethnic nationality found in Shan, Karen (Kayin), Mon,

and Kayah (Karenni) States with an estimated population of be-
tween one and two million. Known as Taungthu (“Mountain People”)
in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, they are considered to be the
second largest ethnic group in Shan State, after the Shans (Tai), and
are found mostly in the southern and western parts of the state. They
speak a Tibeto-Burman language closely related to the Karen
(Kayin) language but consider themselves a separate ethnic group
rather than a Karen subgroup. According to Pa-O legend, they are de-
scended from a king of Thaton who reigned in the sixth century
BCE, but they suffered oppression and dispersal after King
Anawrahta conquered Thaton in 1057. Their traditional black or in-
digo outfits are said to be a symbol of that subjugation.
The majority of Pa-Os are adherents of Buddhism, which has been
strongly influenced by the religion of their Shan neighbors. The
famed “hot-air balloon festival” observed at the end of the Buddhist
lent in Taunggyi, featuring large balloons made in fanciful shapes
out of traditional paper and lit with candles, is celebrated by both
Pa-Os and Shans. Most Pa-Os are farmers, growing such crops as to-
bacco, thanapet leaves (used for wrapping cheroots), and mustard
leaves.
There has been a history of Pa-O resistance to the central govern-
ment since Burma achieved independence in 1948. The first armed
group was the Pa-O Lam Bhu, or Pa-O Union. The Pa-O National
Organization/Army was a member of the National Democratic Front
(1976) and the Democratic Alliance of Burma (1988) but signed a
cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restoration Council in
March 1991; a non-cease-fire group, the Pa-O People’s Liberation
Organization, is based on the border opposite the Thai town of Mae
Hong Son.

PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY PARTY (PDP). Established in

August 1969 by former prime minister U Nu after he went into exile
and including other prominent political figures, such as Bo Let Ya,
Bohmu Aung, and Bo Yan Naing. The PDP’s armed wing, the Patri-
otic Liberation Army, operated an insurgency along the Thai–Burma
border, commanded by Bo Let Ya. In 1970, it formed a united front
with three noncommunist, ethnic minority movements (the Karen
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354 • PATRIOTIC BURMESE FORCES

National Union, the Chin Democracy Party, and the New Mon State
Army), known as the National United Front. However, the move-
ment fell apart after U Nu quit as PDP president in 1973 and left for
India.

PATRIOTIC BURMESE FORCES (PBF). The name given to the

Burma National Army (BNA) by Lord Louis Mountbatten,
Supreme Allied Commander for South East Asia, in the closing
months of World War II. It seems to have been suggested by Aung
San, and was first used in connection with a victory parade held in
Rangoon (Yangon) on June 23, 1945. Having risen against the
Japanese on March 27, the BNA posed a problem for the victorious
Allies because its support was needed in operations against retreating
enemy forces, but British colonial officials considered its com-
mander, Aung San, a collaborator. Mountbatten took a liberal view
and negotiated with Aung San over disarmament of the BNA/PBF
and its integration into a new Burma Army, a policy that was fully
worked out at the Kandy Conference in September 1945. See also
ANTI-FASCIST ORGANIZATION; SLIM, GENERAL WILLIAM;
TATMADAW, HISTORY OF.

PATRON–CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS. In Burma as well as other

Asian countries, patron–client relationships are important in busi-
ness, politics, and daily life; they are especially vital in societies
where the rule of law is weak and protection must be sought from
powerful and influential persons. Patron–clientism suffused Burmese
society during the monarchical period, when elites were composed
neither of hereditary aristocrats (as in Europe) nor meritocratic offi-
cials (as in China), but rather of men who enjoyed the king’s trust and
favor who were subject to his whims. In such a context, power was
personal, not institutional.
During the Burma Socialist Programme Party era (1962–1988),
black market entrepreneurs sought military and BSPP party patrons,
who could give them protection in exchange for economic rewards,
on which the officials in turn became dependent in an economy of
great scarcity. This pattern has continued under the State Law and
Order Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Coun-
cil, arguably becoming more pervasive because the “state capitalist”
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PEACE TALKS • 355

system established after 1988 made available more money (including

foreign investment) and more opportunities for profitable ties be-
tween business and officials. Burmese often comment that if a person
has good connections to top Tatmadaw personnel, especially mem-
bers of the SPDC, he or she can make huge profits quickly on enter-
prises that otherwise would not be economically viable; this includes
the government’s granting of exclusive import–export licenses to fa-
vored businesspeople who would have been unable to obtain them
had economically rational criteria, for example, cost-competitiveness,
been applied.
Throughout Burmese society, people seek the aid of influential
persons who are relatives, went to the same school or university,
served in the same Tatmadaw unit, or came from the same township.
But such ties can produce unpredictable results. If a patron, such as a
high-ranking military officer, is disgraced or purged, his clients will
suddenly be cut off from lucrative opportunities and may even be ar-
rested for corruption. Although loyalty and trust are much-esteemed
Burmese social values, Burmese society is very volatile, and it is dif-
ficult for a someone to be loyal to a patron who might suddenly lose
power.

PAYA (HPAYA). The word in the Burmese (Myanmar) language that

is commonly employed to refer to pagodas, but it may be used in
connection with other Buddhist holy places or objects, such as Bud-
dha images, or even persons, including Gotama Buddha himself.
During the British colonial period, ordinary Burmese often referred
respectfully to Burmese civil servants as paya gyi (great lord). Thus
the word can refer to any object, place, or person deemed worthy of
veneration.

PEACE TALKS (1963–1964). Discussions held by the Revolutionary

Council (RC) of General Ne Win and the Communist Party of
Burma and ethnic minority armed groups. Ne Win claimed the civil
war was ruining the country and that any insurgent group willing to
recognize the “Burmese Road to Socialism” could participate in the
new political system. On April 1, 1963, the RC declared a general
amnesty, and on June 11 invited insurgent leaders to come to Ran-
goon (Yangon) to participate in the talks, guaranteeing safe passage.
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356 • PEACOCK

However, once it became clear that the RC expected total surrender,

the talks stalled. Only one small Karen (Kayin) faction laid down its
arms. In support of the peace process, the “People’s Peace Commit-
tee,” whose prestige was bolstered by the patronage of the revered
Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, held a march from Minhla to Rangoon in
November and a rally in front of Rangoon City Hall that was attended
by as many as 200,000 people. The Peace Committee was seen as a
threat by the RC, especially after another rally was scheduled for
Mandalay, and a wave of arrests and detentions followed. The gen-
eral amnesty expired on January 31, 1964, without having achieved
tangible results.

PEACOCK. The royal bird of Burma, whose splendid plumage sym-

bolizes the sun (in Burmese legend, the kings are descended from the
naymyo or the “solar race”). A peacock displaying its tail appeared on
a white field in royal flags during the late Konbaung Dynasty. Dur-
ing World War II, the motif was adopted by both the British colo-
nial government and the nominally independent state headed by Dr.
Ba Maw in 1943–1945. A different motif from the peacock display-
ing its tail is the “fighting peacock,” its posture symbolizing resist-
ance to colonial rule, used by student activists of the Rangoon Uni-
versity Students Union and the All Burma Students Union during
the 1930s; it is also associated with the Democracy Summer move-
ment of 1988. A flag adopted by several prodemocracy groups since
1988 displays a red field, a yellow fighting peacock, and a white star.
See also GALON; HONGSA.

PEGU (BAGO). The capital of Pegu (Bago) Division, with a popula-

tion estimated at 188,831 in 1996, making it one of Burma’s largest
cities. The city is best known as the site of the Shwemawdaw
Pagoda and the Shwethalyaung Reclining Buddha image. Known
historically as Hanthawaddy, Pegu was one of Burma’s most im-
portant royal capitals, under both the Mon dynasty established by
King Wareru and the Burman (Bamar) Toungoo Dynasty. The
State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace and De-
velopment Council has carried out excavations at the site of King
Bayinnaung’s 16th-century Kanbawzathadi Palace and has partially
reconstructed it.
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PEGU (BAGO) DIVISION • 357

Pegu was captured and destroyed by King Alaungpaya in 1757,

following a Mon uprising and invasion of Upper Burma. Located 80
kilometers northeast of Rangoon (Yangon) along major north–south
road and rail routes linking it with Mandalay, it was once a major
Southeast Asian port city, but its prominence was eclipsed by re-
moval of the Burmese capital to Ava (Inwa) in 1635, Alaungpaya’s
1757 conquest, and the silting of the Pegu River, which cut off the
town from the sea.

PEGU (BAGO) DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions,

with an area of 39,404 square kilometers (15,214 square miles) and
an estimated population in 2000 of over five million (1983 census
figure: 3,799,791). The divisional capital is Pegu (Bago), one of
Burma’s historically most important cities, and the division is divided
into four districts (Pegu, Prome [Pyay], Tharrawaddy [Tha-
yarwady], and Toungoo [Taungoo]) and 28 townships. Topographi-
cally it includes the Pegu (Bago) Yoma, a range of low-lying hills
that in the past was heavily forested, as well as fertile lowlands that
are formed by alluvium from the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River
and its tributaries. The Irrawaddy is a major artery of transportation
and forms most of the division’s western border with adjacent Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Division. Centrally located, Pegu Division
is also bounded by Arakan (Rakhine) State, Magwe (Magway) Di-
vision, Mandalay Division, Mon State, Karen (Kayin) State, and
Rangoon (Yangon) Division.
Pegu Division is Burma’s second-largest producer of rice.
Forestry is also economically important, along with the produc-
tion of oil seeds, tobacco, and sugarcane. The delta of the Sittang
(Sittaung) River is located in the southern part of the division and
empties into the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama), while the Pegu
(Bago) River rises in the Pegu Yoma and connects the cities of
Pegu and Rangoon (Yangon). Ethnically, the population is made
up of Burmans (Bamars), the majority, Mons, Karens (Kayins),
Shans, and others. After Burma became independent in 1948, the
Pegu Yoma, being difficult to penetrate, became a “liberated area”
for the Communist Party of Burma, although the central govern-
ment had cleared the hills of most communist insurgents by the
mid-1970s.
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358 • PEGU (BAGO) YOMA

PEGU (BAGO) YOMA. A narrow range of hills or low-lying moun-

tains (yoma means “mountain range” in the Burmese [Myanmar]
language) that runs north to south from Mount Popa near Myingyan
in Mandalay Division to Singuttara (Theingottara) Hill, where the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda is located in Rangoon (Yangon). The average
elevation is between 475 meters (1,500 feet) and 610 meters (2,000
feet), and its highest elevated point, Sinhna-maung Taung, is 821 me-
ters (2,694 feet). Though not one of Burma’s highest mountain
ranges, the Pegu Yoma’s terrain is difficult to traverse and (in the
past, at least) densely forested, making it an ideal base for insurgen-
cies. In December 1931, the Saya San (Hsaya San) Rebellion
against the British began on Alantaung (“Flag Hill”) in the Pegu
Yoma near Tharrawaddy, and after independence the mainstream
Communist Party of Burma established “liberated areas” in the
mountain range, which the Tatmadaw could not entirely suppress
until the mid-1970s. See also ARAKAN (RAKHINE) YOMA.

PEOPLE’S COUNCILS (PCs). In the political system established

by the Constitution of 1974, popularly elected bodies on the state/
division, township, and ward/village tract levels that were responsi-
ble for public administration, law and order, and other functions. En-
couraged to exercise “local autonomy under central leadership” (per-
haps a contradiction), they were in fact tightly controlled by state and
Burma Socialist Programme Party organs on the central or na-
tional level according to the Leninist principle of “democratic cen-
tralism.”

PEOPLE’S VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION (PVO). An associa-

tion of veterans of the Patriotic Burmese Forces who had not been
mustered into the post–World War II Burma Army, established on
December 1, 1945. It functioned as a paramilitary group loyal to
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League president Aung San. After
his assassination in July 1947, it split into two factions, the “Yellow
Band” PVO led by Bohmu Aung, which remained loyal to the gov-
ernment during the insurrections that erupted in 1948–1949; and the
“White Band” PVO, which went underground on July 28, 1948, and
allied itself with the Communist Party of Burma. The “White
Band” contained a majority, about 60 percent, of PVO personnel, but
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PHEUNG KYA-SHIN • 359

many surrendered their arms during a 1958 amnesty. Old PVO lead-
ers played a peripheral role in the prodemocracy uprising of 1988.

PERFORMING ARTS, TRADITIONAL. Pwe is the Burmese

(Myanmar) language term used to denote various types of perform-
ing arts, including dance, plays, the Burmese equivalent of vaudeville
(anyeint pwe), and marionettes. Especially in rural areas, such per-
formances take place in conjunction with pagoda festivals, shinbyu
ceremonies, and other special events. Burmese dance genres are de-
rived from Indian and Thai models but also have been inspired by nat
worship. One of the most striking dance forms imitates the move-
ments of marionettes. As in Japan and some other Asian countries,
puppet plays (yokthe pwe) became popular because of customary dis-
approval of men and women performing together on the stage, con-
sidered an invitation to public immorality. Dance dramas are inspired
by the Buddhist Jataka Tales (zat pwe) or the Indian Ramayana (Ya-
mazat); Thai (Yodaya) models inspired much play writing during the
late Konbaung Dynasty period. A more modern form of play, the
pya zat, is a kind of musical comedy that is said to have been inspired
by silent movies. Some genres, such as pya zat and puppet plays,
have suffered a decline in popularity because of competition from
motion pictures and the proliferation of “video huts,” especially in
urban areas. See also MUSIC, TRADITIONAL AND MODERN.

PHAUNG DAW U IMAGES. Three images of the Buddha and two

of his disciples, reportedly made in the 12th century, located in the
Phaung Daw U Monastery on the shores of Inle Lake in Shan
State. They have been covered with so much gold leaf that it is im-
possible to see the original figures. During the Phaung Daw U Fes-
tival in September–October, four of the five figures are carried
around the villages on the shore of the lake in an elaborate boat,
while the smallest image remains behind to guard the monastery.
One of the most important Shan Buddhist celebrations, the festival
draws thousands of visitors.

PHEUNG KYA-SHIN (PENG JIASHENG, 1931– ). A Kokang Chi-

nese who fought in Jimmy Yang’s Kokang Revolutionary Force
against the Ne Win regime in the 1960s but went with his younger
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360 • PLURAL SOCIETY

brother Pheung Kya-fu (Peng Jiafu) to the People’s Republic of

China and, in 1968, returned as commander of the Kokang People’s
Liberation Army, which merged with the armed forces of the Com-
munist Party of Burma. Serving as Kokang’s civil administrator, he
was active in the opium trade since at least the early 1970s. In early
1989, Pheung initiated a mutiny against the CPB leadership that re-
sulted in the dissolution of the party. He signed a cease-fire with the
State Law and Order Restoration Council, and his armed force,
now legalized in the eyes of the military regime, became known as
the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army/Party. Pheung
has been a major figure in Burma’s post-1988 drug economy, re-
sponsible for a rapid expansion of opium and heroin exports, al-
though he was driven out of Kokang in 1992 by a rival, Yang Mo-
lian, a scion of Kokang’s ruling Yang clan. By the late 1990s,
however, he had reasserted his position as the territory’s most pow-
erful warlord and cooperated closely with the State Peace and De-
velopment Council. See also LO HSING-HAN.

PLURAL SOCIETY. Term that describes social and economic institu-

tions under colonial rule, first used by J. S. Furnivall, a retired mem-
ber of the Indian Civil Service who served for a long time in Burma
and was critical of the government’s laissez faire economic policies.
In a plural society, ethnic groups preserve their own cultural, linguis-
tic, and religious identity—resisting assimilation—while interacting
with each other primarily in the marketplace, through commercial
transactions. Furnivall described this as “different sections of the
community living side by side, but separately, within the same polit-
ical unit” (Colonial Policy and Practice, 1948). An ethnic division of
labor emerges that marginalizes some groups; most Burmese were
poor farmers, but the capitalist, professional, and working classes
comprised almost exclusively foreigners: European, Chinese, and
Indian expatriates and migrants. Because the colonial government
defined its role exclusively as imposing law and order and ensuring
favorable conditions for profitable operations by foreign-owned
firms, it did nothing to change the plural society structure. When eco-
nomic conditions deteriorated during the 1930s, there were violent
clashes between different groups, especially Burmese and Indians.
The plural society paradigm has been used to describe other former
colonial countries, such as Malaysia, where post-independence gov-
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POPA, MOUNT • 361

ernments sought to break the pattern by cultivating a Malay middle

class (the New Economic Policy); in Burma, the plural society prob-
lem was dealt with by nationalizing (“Burmanizing”) economic en-
terprises after 1962 and expropriating the property of Chinese and In-
dian businesspeople, causing many of them to leave the country. The
result was economic stagnation. See also ANTI-INDIAN RIOTS;
ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME
PARTY ERA.

POLITICAL PARTY REGISTRATION LAW (SEPTEMBER 27,

1988). To prepare for a “multiparty democratic general election,” the
State Law and Order Restoration Council repealed the 1964 Law
Safeguarding National Unity, which made the Burma Socialist Pro-
gramme Party the only legal political party, on September 19, 1988,
and a week later decreed the Political Party Registration Law, which
enabled groups to acquire recognition as parties from the Election
Commission. By the end of October 1988, 66 parties had been regis-
tered, growing to 171 by the end of the year. By mid-1989, 233 par-
ties had been registered, although the Election Commission subse-
quently “deregistered” all but 93 parties, which were allowed to
contest the General Election of May 27, 1990. Among the 93 eligi-
ble parties were the National League for Democracy and the Na-
tional Unity Party. See also PYITHU HLUTTAW ELECTION
LAW.

PONGYI (HPOUNGYI ). In the Burmese (Myanmar) language, liter-

ally “great glory,” used to refer to members of the Sangha who have
been ordained (thus excluding koyin, or novices) and have pursued
the monk’s life for an extended period of time. When speaking
Burmese, a layperson will use the term to address a monk, as a title,
and the monk will use it to refer to himself. Pongyis are considered
to be, in terms of their spiritual status, “sons of the Buddha” and fun-
damentally different from ordinary human beings (lu in Burmese).
See also PAYA (HPAYA); SAYADAW (HSAYADO).

POPA, MOUNT. Located about midway between Pagan (Bagan) and

Meiktila in Mandalay Division, what is popularly known as “Mount
Popa” is actually the core of an extinct volcano, rising 737 meters
(2,200 feet) above the Myingyan Plain. It is the site of shrines devoted
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362 • POPULATION

to the nats. Often called “Burma’s Mount Olympus,” the nat cult
flourished there long before King Anawrahta established the official
pantheon of the Thirty-seven Nats. A popular destination for pil-
grims, it hosts two important nat-pwe, in spring and winter, and is
widely known as the “temple mount” (daung kalat). It should not be
confused with the actual Mount Popa, which is located nearby and has
an altitude of over 1,500 meters (4,500 feet).

POPULATION. There are no accurate figures on the population of

Lower and Upper Burma before the British colonial period. Ac-
cording to one estimate, the population in 1785, early in the reign of
King Bodawpaya, was 4.7 million (rounded), of whom 3.5 million
lived in Upper Burma. That a much smaller number (1.2 million)
seem to have lived in fertile Lower Burma probably reflects the dev-
astation resulting from the suppression of the Mons in the late 18th
century by King Alaungpaya and his successors. Following the
British colonial occupation, the populations of both areas were
roughly equal, due largely to the migration of farmers from Upper to
Lower Burma after the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852). The
colonial government’s decennial censuses reported a country-wide
population of 8.1 million in 1891, 10.5 million in 1901, 12.1 million
in 1911, 13.2 million in 1921, 14.7 million in 1931, and 16.8 million
in 1941. World War II, the Japanese occupation, and civil war af-
ter 1948 did not halt population growth: in 1951, a population of 19.1
million was recorded, and by 1961 it had reached 22.2 million. Be-
tween 1901 and 1983, annual population growth varied between 0.87
and 2.32 percent.
After independence in 1948, the collection of accurate demo-
graphic figures was hampered by unrest and insurgency, especially in
border areas where ethnic minorities lived and carved out “liberated
areas.” The Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) govern-
ment carried out the last national census in 1983: a total population
of 35.3 million people was counted at that time. It was estimated to
be 43.1 million in 1993, 46.4 million in 1997, and between 48 and 50
million at the start of the 21st century. The U.S. government pub-
lished an estimate of 42,510,537 for July 2003 (CIA World Factbook,
2004). Estimates of annual population growth rates also vary widely,
from 0.52 percent to 1.7 percent.
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PRESS SCRUTINY BOARD • 363

There is general agreement that ethnic majority Burmans (Ba-

mars) comprise roughly two-thirds of the total population, although
an accurate ethnic breakdown has not been available since colonial
times, if even then. The largest minority groups are believed to be the
Shans and Karens. During the colonial period, many Indians and
Chinese migrated to Burma, but their numbers declined dramatically
during World War II and, after the establishment of the BSPP
regime, by Ne Win in 1962.
By Asian standards, Burma is not a densely populated country, with
an average of 74 persons per square kilometer. Only 27 percent of the
population lives in urban areas, reflecting the undeveloped state of
the industrial economy even after liberalization policies were
adopted by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (the ur-
banization average for Southeast Asia is 37 percent). Because of
deepening rural poverty, however, the urban population seems to be
growing in recent years relative to the population as a whole because
large numbers of poor villagers now work in urban factories or con-
struction sites. There are no accurate figures on the populations of the
major cities; Rangoon (Yangon) has between 4.5 and 5 million res-
idents and Mandalay, 600,000 to 800,000. Also, there are no credi-
ble statistics on new immigrants from the People’s Republic of
China (PRC), who are believed to number as many as several hun-
dred thousand, especially in Upper Burma and Shan State. Along
with large refugee populations in neighboring countries, such as
Thailand and Bangladesh, Chinese in-migration represents an im-
portant demographic change in post-1988 Burma. Another factor is
the impact of AIDS: In 2005, the country had an estimated 600,000
people afflicted with HIV/AIDS, and the epidemic has had a signifi-
cant impact on mortality rates and population growth, especially be-
cause most of the victims are young people. Life expectancy at birth
for both sexes is 55.8 years, which is low compared to Burma’s
neighbors, including Thailand (71.2 years). See also HEALTH.

PRESS SCRUTINY BOARD (PSB). The chief censorship organ of

the Burmese government, which has exercised strict control over
publication of books, periodicals, and magazines during both the
Burma Socialist Programme Party and the State Law and Order
Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Council eras.
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364 • PROME

According to guidelines promulgated in July 1975, the PSB can halt

publication of, among other things, items considered “harmful to na-
tional solidarity and unity.” Because of the ambiguity of the guide-
lines, almost any publication, even if nonpolitical, is liable to censor-
ship. After 1988, for example, references to things associated with
Aung San Suu Kyi were not permitted (e.g., the Nobel Prize). Be-
cause the PSB requires that publishers submit books and magazines
after they are printed, rather than as manuscripts, there is a strong fi-
nancial incentive for self-censorship, especially because paper is ex-
pensive and in short supply. Objectionable material is torn out of pub-
lications or inked-over, with popular monthly magazines being
special targets of censorship. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN
BURMA; MASS MEDIA IN BURMA.

PROME (PYAY). One of Burma’s major cities, on the eastern bank of

the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River in the western part of Pegu
(Bago) Division. Its population was estimated at 104,537 in 1996.
Located on principal north–south transportation routes—by water,
road, and rail—it is best known among Burmese for the Shwesan-
daw Pagoda. On the outskirts of town are the ruins of the Pyu city
of Sri Ksetra (Thayekhittaya), which contains the cylindrical Baw-
bawgyi Pagoda, a ninth-century structure quite different in design
from typical Burmese pagodas.

PWE. Traditional performances, including song, instrumental music,

dance, plays (set to music), and comedy routines, which are spon-
sored on numerous occasions, including festivals related to pagodas,
shinbyu, and ear-boring ceremonies; life-cycle occasions, such as
birth, marriage, and death; and sometimes simply when a sponsor de-
sires to host one. Traditionally, pwe are held out of doors, often in the
street, and have an informal atmosphere, spectators drifting in and
out. Vivid descriptions of pwe are found in James G. Scott’s The
Burman: His Life and Notions and George Orwell’s Burmese Days.
See also ANYEINT; MUSIC, TRADITIONAL AND MODERN;
NAT-PWE; PERFORMING ARTS, TRADITIONAL.

PYIDAUNGSU (UNION) PARTY. The new name for the “Clean”

faction of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League led by U Nu,
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PYINMANA • 365

adopted in March 1960. It won a landslide victory in the general elec-

tion of February 1960 but subsequently split into two factions. Its in-
ternal problems paved the way for the military coup d’état of General
Ne Win in March 1962.

PYINMANA. A town located 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of

Rangoon (Yangon) in the southern part of Mandalay Division. Py-
inmana was the site of the headquarters of the Burma Defence Army
during World War II and an insurgency by the Communist Party
of Burma after independence in 1948. Its population in 2005 was es-
timated at around 98,000. Although situated near a major north-south
road between Rangoon and Mandalay, its relative remoteness, on the
Sittang (Sittoung) River, with mountains and the ethnic minority ar-
eas of Shan, Kayah, and Karen States lying to the east and south-
east, may have been a factor in the decision of the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) to make Pyinmana, or rather, a heav-
ily fortified compound located a few kilometers outside the town,
Burma’s new national capital. On November 6, 2005, civil servants
in a truck convoy left Rangoon to take up their posts at the new site.
The official name of the new capital will be Nay Pyi Daw (“Place of
the King”).
The military junta’s motivations for the capital’s relocation, which
was veiled in secrecy and poorly organized (there was insufficient
food and housing at the new site), remain obscure. Some observers
believe the SPDC was fearful of an Iraq-style invasion of Burma by
the United States, which might include an amphibious landing on
the coast near Rangoon. The need to exercise greater pressure on the
ethnic minorities, especially the Shans and Karens (Kayins), is
probably also a factor, especially since the October 2004 purge of
Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, head of Border Area Develop-
ment Programs since 1989, injected a new element of uncertainty
into relations between the junta and the border area armed groups.
Moreover, Burma’s military elite, especially Senior General Than
Shwe, are very superstitious, and astrology and yedaya probably
played a major role in their decision to quit Rangoon. But most fun-
damentally, against a background of continued economic crisis, it
seems that the SPDC was afraid of a recurrence of Democracy Sum-
mer in Burma’s cities and wanted to construct a tightly controlled,
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366 • PYITHU HLUTTAW

combined military camp and capital in a remote area to insulate

themselves from urban social tensions. The move also seems to re-
flect a return to an isolationist foreign policy, a desire to minimize
foreign ties (except possibly with China) in a manner similar to that
of the 1962–1988 regime of General Ne Win. Relocation of the cap-
ital is not without precedent in Burmese history: King Thalun (r.
1629–1648) moved the capital from Pegu (Bago) to Ava (Inwa) in
central Burma, and it was relocated several times between Ava, Ama-
rapura, and Mandalay during the Konbaung Dynasty. See also
TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR) SOCIETY.

PYITHU HLUTTAW (PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY). The unicameral

national legislature, defined as the “highest organ of state power” in
the political system established by the Constitution of 1974. Its
members were popularly elected for terms of four years, though this
could be shortened or extended. In the General Election of May 27,
1990, candidates ran for seats in the People’s Assembly (485 seats
were contested out of a total of 492), but the legislature was never al-
lowed to form a government. See also GANDHI HALL DECLARA-
TION; PYITHU HLUTTAW ELECTION LAW.

PYITHU HLUTTAW ELECTION LAW (MAY 31, 1989). The State

Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) decreed the law to
prepare for the General Election of May 27, 1990. It specified that
the election would be held for “representatives” from the constituen-
cies of the Pyithu Hluttaw and laid out in detail qualifications of vot-
ers and candidates, the criteria necessary to recognize votes as valid,
and other matters. Its wording was a source of considerable confusion,
since the Pyithu Hluttaw, described in Article 41 of the Constitution
of 1974 as the “highest organ of State power,” was regarded by the
democratic opposition and many foreign governments as a governing
body rather than, as the SLORC later implied, a constitution-drafting
body. When the National League for Democracy won a landslide
victory in the election, it was expected that a transfer of power would
occur. See also POLITICAL PARTY REGISTRATION LAW.

PYUS. A people speaking a Tibeto-Burman language, who established

states in the valley of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River during
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RAIL TRANSPORT • 367

the early centuries CE and are often described as the “advance guard”
of the Burmans (Bamars). Most of what we know about them comes
from the Buddhist pilgrims I Tsing and Hsuan-tsang, the official his-
tory of the T’ang Dynasty (618–906), and other Chinese sources, as
well as extensive excavations that have been carried out since British
colonial times at Sri Ksetra (Thayekkhittaya), one of the Pyus’ ma-
jor cities. Deeply influenced by India and possibly ruled for a time by
an Indian dynasty, the Pyus practiced a religion that combined Hindu
and Buddhist elements. According to the Chinese, they exercised
suzerainty over 18 states and nine walled cities. Apart from Sri Kse-
tra, they had sizeable urban centers at Beiktano (in present-day
Magwe [Magway] Division) and Halingyi (in Sagaing Division).
The Pyus paid tribute to Nan Chao and may have been conquered by
that state in the ninth century CE.
According to Chinese descriptions, they had a high level of cul-
ture. At the beginning of the ninth century, a band of Pyu musicians
accompanying a Nan Chao mission to the T’ang capital of Ch’ang-an
gave a performance before the emperor. A didactic verse by the great
Chinese poet Po Chü-I recommended that the emperor pay more at-
tention to the sufferings of the peasants than to the exotic music of
P’iao (Pyu): “Music of P’iao, in vain you raise your din/Better were
it that my Lord should listen to that peasant’s humble words.” No
trace remains of the Pyus as a people today; they were probably as-
similated by the Burmans.

–R–

RAIL TRANSPORT. The first railroad was opened for service in 1877
under British rule, connecting Rangoon (Yangon) with Prome
(Pyay). By 1941, Burma had an extensive rail system, totalling 4,600
kilometers (2,852 miles) of track, including the spectacular Gokteik
Viaduct in what is now Shan State, constructed by American engi-
neers between 1899 and 1903. Most rail links were inoperable by the
end of World War II, and the system further suffered from the in-
surgencies and instability of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Accord-
ing to government statistics, Burma’s track mileage totalled 5,837
kilometers (3,619 miles) in 1997–1998. There has been construction
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368 • RAM-UK

of new rail links since the State Law and Order Restoration Coun-
cil seized power in 1988. Like the wartime Thai–Burma Railway,
these projects have often involved the use of forced labor.

RAM-UK. “Lord (uk) of the soil/land (ram),” referring to the chiefs of

the Chins, whose authority encompassed as many as several hundred
villages, in which case he was the leader of a tribe. He had the au-
thority to distribute land to cultivators and was high priest officiating
over sacrifices to the Khua-hrum (local guardian deities), head of the
community, and commander in war. The authority of the ram-uk was
tightly bound to the Chins’ animistic religion because, as lord of the
land, he had a special relationship with the deities who protected it
and the people who lived on it. When the British issued the Chin Hills
Regulations in 1896, they refused to recognize the authority of the
ram-uk, who had strenuously opposed the pacification of Chinram,
but this was reversed after the Anglo-Chin War of 1917–1919,
partly to gain the goodwill of the tribal elites.

RANCE, HUBERT. British army general who served as the head of the
Civil Affairs Service (Burma) from July to October 1945 and was ap-
pointed Reginald Dorman-Smith’s successor as governor of Burma
in August 1946. He established a friendly working relationship with
Aung San, which facilitated a peaceful resolution of the indepen-
dence issue, as reflected in the January 1947 Aung San–Attlee
Agreement.

RANGOON INCIDENT. On October 9, 1983, operatives from North

Korea placed a bomb in the Martyrs’ Mausoleum north of the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon (Yangon) that killed 21 people, includ-
ing four ministers in the cabinet of the president of South Korea,
Chon Doo Hwan, who was beginning a state visit to five Asian coun-
tries. Chon himself narrowly escaped assassination because of a de-
lay in his arrival at the monument for a wreath-laying ceremony. Se-
curity forces tracked down three North Koreans, one of whom was
killed and the others put on trial and sentenced to death. Burma im-
mediately broke off relations with Pyongyang, which before the
bombing had been close and cordial. The incident was deeply em-
barrassing to the government of Ne Win, and many observers attrib-
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RANGOON • 369

ute it to security lapses and disarray in Military Intelligence follow-

ing the purge of “MI” Tin Oo earlier that year. See also KHIN
NYUNT.

RANGOON (YANGON). Burma’s capital and largest city from the

British colonial era until 2005. Its population was 2,513,123 when
the last official census was taken in 1983, but at the beginning of the
21st century it was estimated at between 4.5 and 5 million. The city
is located in a lowland alluvial area, at the confluence of the Rangoon
(Yangon) River (which is called the Hlaing River farther upstream)
and Pazundaung Creek (known upstream as Ngamoeyeik Creek), al-
though expansion of its territory during the Caretaker Government
and State Law and Order Restoration Council periods placed its
eastern limits along the Pegu (Bago) River and its western limits in
new townships across the Rangoon/Hlaing River. Rangoon is not on
the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River but is connected to it by the
Twante Canal. Apart from the rivers, the city center’s most prominent
geographic features are Singuttara (Theingottara) Hill, where the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda is located, and Kandawgyi and Inya Lakes.
Rangoon was never a royal city like Pagan or Mandalay, but its
early history is intimately linked to legends concerning the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda, where relics of Gotama Buddha and three of his
predecessors are enshrined. The site was originally a Mon fishing vil-
lage, Dagon. After Alaungpaya subjugated the Mons, he established
Yangoun (“End of Strife”) in 1755 as his kingdom’s primary port. It
became the center of British colonial power after the Second Anglo-
Burmese War (1852) and the capital of the independent Union of
Burma after 1948. Since the early 20th century, Rangoon has been
the country’s principal arena of political conflict, especially during
the struggle for independence in the 1930s and 1940s and again dur-
ing the Democracy Summer in 1988.
Rangoon is the country’s major center of finance, industry, and
communications with the outside world. Its port is the largest in the
country, and the international airport at Mingaladon north of the city
center has the greatest traffic among Burmese airports. Highways, in-
land waterways, and railways link it with most other major cities and
towns, including Mandalay, Moulmein (Mawlamyine), and Pegu
(Bago).
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370 • RANGOON

Since economic liberalization policies were adopted in 1988, in-

dustrial parks financed with foreign private investment have been es-
tablished in outlying townships, and new foreign-financed luxury ho-
tels downtown make Rangoon the center of Burma’s tourism sector.
The city boasts the country’s major universities, including Rangoon
(Yangon) University and the Rangoon Institute of Technology
(Yangon Technological University). After 1988, many university fa-
cilities were moved to outlying districts, apparently to discourage
student political activism. This includes a new institution, Dagon
University, established in the mid-1990s.
The modern city owes its layout to the British, who after 1852 con-
structed a modern downtown area with a rectangular grid of streets
centered on the Sule Pagoda. The central business district still con-
tains Chinese and Indian communities that trace their roots to the
colonial period and traditionally dominated commerce. Major gov-
ernment ministries are also located here, and just north of the district
the fortified Defence Services Compound served as the command
headquarters of the Tatmadaw until this was moved to a location
north of Inya Lake, Eight Mile Junction. Because of the threat of civil
unrest, the military presence in Rangoon is large though low profile,
including extensive installations in Mingaladon Township.
The State Law and Order Restoration Council transformed Ran-
goon’s landscape by establishing 10 new satellite townships; reset-
tling as many as 500,000 of the central city’s residents there; and em-
barking on the construction of new roads, bridges, and other
infrastructure. Rangoon’s planning and infrastructure development is
the responsibility of the Yangon City Development Committee, es-
tablished in 1990. Its chairman serves concurrently as city mayor.
Austere and run down during the Burma Socialist Programme
Party (BSPP) period (1962–1988), Rangoon today looks increas-
ingly like other Asian metropolises, including widening gaps be-
tween a small affluent class characterized by conspicuous consump-
tion (including patronage of newly opened golf courses) and a growing
number of desperately poor people who survive by working in the in-
formal sector.
During the colonial era, Rangoon was a multiethnic city; more
than two-thirds of its residents were non-Burmese, especially so-
journers from British-ruled India. However, the Japanese occupa-
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RANGOON (YANGON) DIVISION • 371

tion of 1942–1945 and nationalization policies under the BSPP

regime forced Westerners and many foreign Asians to leave, and per-
sons of nonindigenous ancestry comprised less than 8 percent of the
population in 1983. Apart from Burmans (Bamars), there are a sub-
stantial number of Karen (Kayin) residents, especially in Insein
Township.
In mid-2005, it was disclosed that the State Peace and Develop-
ment Council planned to move the headquarters of the Tatmadaw
and Ministry of Defence from Rangoon to a heavily fortified com-
pound outside the town of Pyinmana, located in Mandalay Division.
At that time, it was unclear whether Pyinmana would replace Ran-
goon as capital or serve as a second capital. But in early November
2005, when civil servants in large numbers were moved in truck con-
voys from Rangoon to Pyinmana, it became apparent that the military
regime was determined to relocate not only the military but civil
components of government to the new site, which has the official
name of Nay Pyi Daw (“Place of the King”). The action is reminis-
cent of the decision of King Thalun (r. 1629–1648) to move the
country’s capital from Pegu (Bago) to Ava (Inwa).

RANGOON (YANGON) DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14 states and

divisions, it has an area of 10,171 square kilometers (3,927 square
miles), making it the smallest of Burma’s regional jurisdictions, and
an estimated population in 2000 of 5.56 million (1983 census figure:
3,965,916). The divisional capital is Rangoon (Yangon), which is
Burma’s largest city and until 2005 was the national capital. Rangoon
Division comprises four districts (East, West, South, and North Ran-
goon [Yangon]) and 45 townships, of which 34 are currently located
within the capital’s city limits. The topography is level, formed by al-
luvial deposits from the region’s many rivers and creeks, although
Singuttara (Theingottara) Hill, where the Shwe Dagon Pagoda is lo-
cated, is the southernmost extension of the Pegu (Bago) Yoma. Ran-
goon Division is Burma’s most densely populated, with an average of
525 persons per square kilometer (1,360 persons per square mile); the
population is most concentrated in Rangoon’s Pabedan Township, lo-
cated in the old Central Business District, with 77,220 persons per
square kilometer (200,000 persons per square mile). However, the di-
vision also includes the remote and thinly populated Cocos Islands,
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372 • RANGOON (YANGON) GENERAL HOSPITAL INCIDENT

in the Andaman Sea, which have functioned as a naval base and a

place of exile for (political) prisoners. Apart from Rangoon, major
towns in the division are Htaukkyant (site of a large British Com-
monwealth war cemetery), Hlegu, Hmawbi, Syriam (Thanlyin),
Kyauktan, and Twante.
Although agriculture is not unimportant to Rangoon Division’s
economy (despite the post-1988 creation of new towns, which have
incorporated crop lands), it is Burma’s most urbanized region and
contains the country’s major industrial, mercantile, and financial en-
terprises, including industrial estates established with foreign invest-
ment in Rangoon city’s outlying areas, such as Mingaladon Town-
ship. Most of Burma’s major universities, including the University
of Rangoon (Yangon), Dagon University, and Rangoon (Yangon)
Institute of Technology, are located there, as well as central govern-
ment ministries and the headquarters of the Tatmadaw. It has one of
only two international airports in the country (the other is at Man-
dalay) and is the main sea and air gateway to the outside world.
Rangoon Division has an ethnically diverse population. Aside
from a Burman (Bamar) majority, there are significant communities
of Karens (Kayins), especially in Insein Township, Mons,
Arakanese (Rakhines), Shans, and Burmese citizens of Chinese
and Indian ancestry, as well as the country’s largest concentration of
expatriates, including Chinese, Indians, Westerners, Japanese, and
persons from countries belonging to the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations. Rangoon Division’s urban environments are diverse.
Newly modernized downtown areas resemble Bangkok or Kuala
Lumpur, with their high-rise hotels and condominiums, and middle-
class areas, such as Bahan Township, have many large houses. But
many of the new towns resemble impoverished rural villages, while
adjacent suburbs contain affluent “gated communities” that resemble
those of Southern California. Although ethnic segregation seems to
be breaking down, Karen and Indian Muslim communities still main-
tain a large measure of coherence and identity. Since 1988, large ar-
eas in Rangoon Division have been allocated by the government for
new Buddhist monasteries, schools, and pagodas.

RANGOON (YANGON) GENERAL HOSPITAL INCIDENT (AU-

GUST 10, 1988). After the hospital staff hung signs in front of the
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RANGOON (YANGON) UNIVERSITY • 373

colonial-era building calling for an end to Tatmadaw shooting of

demonstrators, army units fired into the hospital compound with au-
tomatic weapons, killing and wounding nurses and some bystanders.
The incident was one of the most important in turning the general
population of Rangoon (Yangon) against the military. See also DE-
MOCRACY SUMMER.

RANGOON (YANGON) INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (RIT).

Originally the Department of Engineering at Rangoon (Yangon)
University. A new campus at Gyogone, Insein Township, was con-
structed in 1958–1961 with assistance from the Soviet Union. RIT
became completely independent of Rangoon University in 1964, as
part of a general university reorganization carried out by the Ne Win
regime. The institute is best known to the outside world for the Tea
Shop Incident of March 12, 1988, a fight between RIT students and
town youths, which took place at the Sandar Win Teashop adjacent to
the campus and escalated into a large-scale student demonstration. In
1998, RIT’s name was changed to Yangon Technological University;
the following year, a new campus was opened in Hlaing Thayar Town-
ship west of the Hlaing River. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER;
MAUNG PHONE MAW; WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT.

RANGOON (YANGON) UNIVERSITY. Burma’s oldest degree-

conferring institution of higher education, formally established in
1920 by the British colonial government. The Rangoon University Act
was controversial because the new institution had little autonomy and
offered a curriculum along British lines that was designed to train a
small number of élite civil servants. Instruction was in English rather
than Burmese. In protest, a student strike was organized in Novem-
ber 1920. After 1935, when Ko Nu became president of the Rangoon
University Students Union (RUSU), the scenic campus along the
shores of Inya Lake and the area around the Shwe Dagon Pagoda,
where students established strike centers, became sites of student ac-
tivism that played a vital role in the struggle for independence.
The pre–World War II university had four basic components:
University College, Judson College (a Baptist missionary institu-
tion), the Teachers Training College, and the Medical College.
There were also postgraduate courses in Law and Engineering.
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374 • RANGOON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS UNION

Ethnic minorities, especially Karens (Kayins), were well repre-

sented at Judson College (often nicknamed “Karen College”);
most Burman (Bamar) students attended University College,
which in the late 1930s had 800 male and 200 female students. Ac-
cording to Mi Mi Khaing, the women were happily idolized and
fussed over by the exuberant male students. Apart from RUSU and
political activism, the campus was kept lively by activities such as
the Rangoon University Boat Club, which held regattas on Inya
Lake, and frequent anyeint performances.
Student freedoms were sharply curtailed after the July 7, 1962 In-
cident, when the military demolished the RUSU building. The Ne
Win regime reorganized Burma’s university system in 1964, and RU
became the Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (RASU), offering
courses in natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, while the
medical, education, and economics faculties were split off to become
separate institutions. RASU had affiliated colleges at Botataung,
Hlaing, Kyimyindine, and Prome (Pyay), as well as a Workers Col-
lege and the Yangon Cooperative Degree College, though these were
reorganized and consolidated during the 1990s. In 1997–1998 its fac-
ulty numbered 945 and the student body 13,539.
Following the massive demonstrations of Democracy Summer
in 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State
Peace and Development Council kept the campuses of RASU and
other universities closed for much of the time until 2001, although
student demonstration broke out at RASU in 1991 and 1996. The
military regime has also built new universities, located far outside
Rangoon’s city center, to make it difficult for students and ordinary
citizens to mingle. The future of Rangoon University is unclear. See
also DAGON UNIVERSITY; RANGOON (YANGON) INSTI-
TUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

RANGOON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS UNION (RUSU). Estab-

lished as a student body organization in the 1920s to promote cam-
pus life, RUSU played a central role in the political struggles of the
1930s and after Burma became independent in 1948. The election of
Ko Nu as its president in 1935 marked the beginning of its radical
phase. When he and Ko Aung San, editor of the RUSU magazine
and member of its executive committee, were expelled from Ran-
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REFUGEES • 375

goon (Yangon) University in 1936 for opposing the university’s

British authorities, a RUSU-organized student strike led to their rein-
statement. Both RUSU and a new student organization, the All
Burma Students Union, supported the Oil Field Workers’ Strike of
1938. After World War II, RUSU was strongly influenced by the
Communist Party of Burma; in the 1950s, leadership of the union
was bitterly contested by procommunist students and the “Demo-
cratic Students Organization,” which was sponsored by the Socialist
Party. During the Caretaker Government period (1958–1960),
many procommunist students were arrested, some being exiled to the
Cocos Islands.
After the establishment of the Revolutionary Council in March
1962, Ne Win took a hard line against student activism. In the early
morning following the July 7, 1962 incident, in which many stu-
dents were killed by Tatmadaw troops, the RUSU building on the
edge of the university campus was demolished, allegedly on orders
from Ne Win, although he blamed Brigadier Aung Gyi. During the
demonstrations of 1988 there were demands that RUSU be reestab-
lished and its historic brick building rebuilt. At the beginning of the
21st century, however, the place where the building stood remains va-
cant and fenced off. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER.

RAZADARIT, KING (r. 1385–1423). One of Burma’s most prominent

Mon kings, he was an able ruler who fought protracted wars with the
state of Ava (Inwa) in Upper Burma and with the Tai states of
Ayuthaya and Lan Na (Chiang Mai). During his reign the royal cap-
ital of Hanthawaddy (modern-day Pegu [Bago]) was one of South-
east Asia’s most prosperous port cities. Like his successors Shin-
sawbu and Dhammazedi, he made generous donations to the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda and to the Shwemawdaw in Pegu. See also LOWER
BURMA; WARERU.

REFUGEES. Because of human rights abuses and deteriorating eco-

nomic conditions, the number of Burmese refugees has increased dra-
matically since the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) seized power in September 1988. Among the first refugees
were an estimated 8,000–10,000 activists who left following the new
military regime’s suppression of the Democracy Summer movement.
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376 • REFUGEES

This group, mostly students but also including teachers, civil servants,
and members of the Sangha, was largely urban and Burman (Bamar).
Based along the lengthy Thai–Burma border, many joined the All
Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) and fought together
with other members of the Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB)
against the SLORC. By the mid-1990s, however, a majority of these
activists had left the border area and settled in Bangkok, Chiang Mai,
and other parts of Thailand, or went farther afield to Japan, North
America, or Western Europe. Smaller groups of student refugees set-
tled in China and India. Since 1988, a steady stream of Burman and
ethnic minority intellectuals, artists, and members of the Pyithu Hlut-
taw who won seats in the General Election of May 27, 1990, have
also gone abroad, fleeing persecution.
By far the largest number of refugees are members of ethnic mi-
norities who have, either directly or indirectly, been targets of the
“Four Cuts” strategy of the Tatmadaw, aimed at removing popular
support for such insurgent movements as the Karen National Union.
These include Shans, Karennis, Karens (Kayins), and Mons, most of
whom have fled across the border into Thailand. They can be divided
into two groups: a relatively stable population of Karens, Mons, and
Karennis, numbering 120,000–130,000, who live in refugee camps
along the Thai–Burma border; and a much larger group of people from
Shan State, as many as one million, who work as illegal or semilegal
laborers inside Thailand. India has an estimated 52,000 refugees,
mostly Chin, Bangladesh about 120,000 Muslim Rohingyas, and
China an undetermined number of Kachins. Although most Burmese
refugees live in neighboring countries, there is a large number of Ro-
hingyas in Malaysia and the Middle East. The total number of
Burmese refugees is unknown, but is probably between one and two
million.
The conventional distinction between political refugees, who are
fleeing persecution at home, and economic refugees, who are seeking
a better livelihood abroad, is not especially useful in Burma’s case
because many in the latter category, especially ethnic minorities, are
fleeing truly desperate conditions caused by the policies of the State
Peace and Development Council. They include minority women
and girls who have been drawn into the sex industry in northern
Thailand because of extreme economic deprivation (an estimated
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RELIGIONS IN BURMA • 377

20,000–30,000 in the early 1990s). Internally displaced persons, vic-

tims of forced relocation numbering between 600,000 and one mil-
lion, often become refugees. Although educated refugees have been
able to create an intellectually active exile community in neighboring
countries or the West, the great majority endure great insecurity and
deprivation outside their homeland. See also FORCED LABOR.

REGIONAL MILITARY COMMANDS (RMC). Before 1988, the

Army (Tatmadaw Kyi) conducted its operations on the regional
level through nine Regional Level Commands, which after the estab-
lishment of the State Law and Order Restoration Council were ex-
panded to 12. At the beginning of the 21st century, the RMC are the
Northern Command (Kachin State, headquartered in Myitkyina);
Northwestern Command (Sagaing Division, headquartered in
Monywa); Northeastern Command (northern Shan State, headquar-
tered in Lashio); Central Command (Mandalay Division, headquar-
tered in Mandalay); Eastern Command (southern Shan State, head-
quartered in Taunggyi); Triangle Command (eastern Shan State,
headquartered in Keng Tung); Western Command (Arakan
[Rakhine] and Chin States, headquartered in Sittwe [Sittway]);
Southwestern Command (Irrawaddy [Ayeyarwady] Division, head-
quartered in Bassein [Pathein]); Southern Command (Pegu [Bago]
and Magwe [Magway] Divisions, headquartered in Toungoo [Taun-
goo]); Rangoon (Yangon) Command (Rangoon [Yangon] Division,
headquartered in Mingaladon Township); Southeastern Command
(Mon and Karen [Kayin] States, headquartered in Moulmein
[Mawlamyine]); and the Coastal Region Command (Tenasserim
[Tanintharyi] Division, headquartered in Mergui [Myeik]). RMC
commanders are of major general (two-star) rank, but at the begin-
ning of the 21st century, they were not included in the State Peace
and Development Council junta.

RELIGIONS IN BURMA. According to the CIA World Factbook

(2005), 89 percent of Burma’s population are adherents to Bud-
dhism, 4 percent are Christians (3 percent Baptist and 1 percent Ro-
man Catholic), 4 percent are Muslims, 1 percent are animists, and 2
percent are adherents of other religions. Burmese government figures
are similar: 89.2 percent Buddhist, 5 percent Christian, 3.8 percent
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378 • RELIGIONS IN BURMA

Muslim, 1.2 percent animist, 0.5 percent Hindu, and 0.2 percent
other. Burma’s national identity has been intimately connected with
Theravada Buddhism since the 11th century, when King Anawrahta
of the Pagan Dynasty made it the official religion (thus the popular
saying, “to be Burmese is to be Buddhist”). During the dynastic pe-
riod, Burman (Bamar), Mon, Arakanese (Rakhine), and Shan
rulers gave generous donations to the Buddhist Sangha and spon-
sored pagoda-building projects. The old kings were also charged
with upholding doctrinal orthodoxy by appointing a respected senior
monk as head of the Sangha (known as the Thathanabaing in the
Burmese [Myanmar] language). From at least the Pagan period,
there were minority communities of Hindus and Muslims, and in
later centuries Christians, whose presence was generally tolerated.
The British colonial regime was religiously neutral, refusing to ap-
point a Thathanabaing, but allowed Christian missionaries to prose-
lytize, especially among ethnic minority peoples, such as the Karens
(Kayins), Chins, and Kachins. Thus, defense of the Buddhist reli-
gion became a major theme in early 20th-century nationalism. The
British also encouraged the immigration of people from the Indian
subcontinent, most of whom were Hindus or Muslims, greatly in-
creasing the size of these religious minorities, especially in Lower
Burma. This contributed to violent communal clashes during the
1930s between Burmese Buddhists and Hindu or Muslim Indians.
Burma’s status as a secular state continued after it became indepen-
dent in 1948, but in August 1961, with the backing of Prime Minis-
ter U Nu, parliament passed a constitutional amendment making
Buddhism the official religion. The Revolutionary Council estab-
lished in March 1962 by General Ne Win nullified this measure, and
since then Burma officially has remained secular (this is reflected in
the Constitution of 1974, which was abrogated in 1988). However,
the post-1988 State Law and Order Restoration Council/State
Peace and Development Council military junta has patronized sen-
ior monks and devoted scarce resources to ambitious pagoda proj-
ects, including replacement of the hti or finial on the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda in 1999. By acting as Buddhism’s patrons, imitating the old
Burmese kings, the military regime seeks to acquire legitimacy in the
eyes of the religious majority. Minorities, especially Muslims, have
had their religious activities restricted by the state and, at times, have
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REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL • 379

been targets of mob violence. In contemporary Burma, all citizens are

required to carry an identity card that shows their religion, which ex-
poses minorities to discrimination by officials.
The issue of religious adherence is complicated by the fact that,
among the Buddhist majority, many, if not most, people also practice
forms of animism, that is, veneration of gods or spirits known as nats.
In traditional Burmese homes, a small nat shrine often supplements a
Buddhist altar. Other forms of supernaturalism are widespread among
Buddhists, for example, the old belief that certain amulets and tattoos
can make a person invulnerable to bullets and the practice of yedaya, a
form of magic designed to prevent misfortune. “New religions” have
also emerged, especially among ethnic minorities living in the moun-
tainous border areas, such as God’s Army among some Karens. Such
religions typically blend animist, Christian, and Buddhist elements.
Religious values remain strong in Burmese society, in contrast to
some neighboring Asian countries. This is due in part to isolation dur-
ing the socialist period (1962–1988), which limited the impact of sec-
ular and modern trends. Moreover, most Burmese (about three-quarters
of the population) live in rural areas, where old religious values and
superstitious beliefs remain largely unchallenged. Among those
Burmese who can afford it, generous donations (dana) to Buddhist
monks or pagodas are an important means of enhancing social pres-
tige, and even gaining influence with the military elite. Perhaps most
fundamentally, the consolations of religion are essential to people liv-
ing in a nation that lacks the rule of law and where insecurity is the lot
of rich and poor alike. See also ASTROLOGY; BUDDHA, GO-
TAMA; BUTTERFLY SPIRIT; CONGREGATION OF THE
SANGHA (1980); DHAMMA; INDIANS IN BURMA; JATAKA
TALES; JEWS IN BURMA; JUDSON, ADONIRAM; KUTHO
(MERIT); MEDITATION; NAT-PWE; NIBBANA; NUNS, BUD-
DHIST; PALI; PAYA; PONGYI; SHIN ARAHAN; SHINBYU; STUPA;
THAGYA MIN; VINAYA; WEIKZA; YOUNG MEN’S BUDDHIST
ASSOCIATION.

RESISTANCE DAY. See ARMED FORCES DAY (MARCH 27).

REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL (RC). Following the coup d’état of

March 2, 1962, General Ne Win set up the Revolutionary Council as
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380 • RICE

a martial law body, exercising supreme executive and legislative au-

thority in place of institutions established by the Constitution of
1947, which had been abrogated. Originally composed of 17 officers
of brigadier or colonel rank (apart from the chairman, Ne Win, who
was a general), it was reorganized in 1971 (following the first con-
gress of the Burma Socialist Programme Party) as a 15-member
body, including four civilians. Several of the original RC members,
including Brigadier Aung Gyi, were Ne Win’s comrades in the
Fourth Burma Rifles. The Revolutionary Council exercised execu-
tive power through a regional-local hierarchy of Security and Ad-
ministration Committees (SACs). Following implementation of the
Constitution of 1974, it was abolished. See also ADMINISTRA-
TION OF BURMA, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY
ERA.

RICE. Burma’s staple food, the most important part of the meal for
most people. Burmese people are among the world’s largest rice con-
sumers: A per capita average of 186 kilograms of cleaned rice is eaten
annually, which provides around 75 percent of their caloric intake.
Rice is also a major element in the development of the country’s his-
tory and cultures. Paddy rice cultivation became synonymous with
civilization in lowland or plateau areas inhabited by Mons, Burmans
(Bamars), Arakanese (Rakhines), and Shans (Tai) because it made
possible a high standard of living (compared to hill-dwelling peoples,
who engaged in shifting agriculture) in which Indo-Buddhist civi-
lization, including the building of pagodas and royal support for the
Sangha, flourished. Irrigated rice fields, principally at Kyaukse and
Minbu, were the economic foundation of the Pagan Dynasty, pro-
viding it with surpluses of food that supported a powerful and mili-
tarily expansive state from the 11th to 13th centuries. After Lower
Burma was annexed following the Second Anglo-Burmese War in
1852, the British encouraged the migration of farmers from Upper
Burma, who cleared land in the delta of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) River and grew rice for export. This experiment in
“industrial agriculture,” assisted by British investment in transporta-
tion and rice mills and the opening of the Suez Canal, was so suc-
cessful that, before World War II, Burma was the world’s largest sup-
plier of the grain to world markets (over three million tons annually).
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RICE • 381

After Burma became independent in 1948, it lost this distinction,

largely because of insurgency and the ill-conceived agricultural poli-
cies of the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime (1962–1988).
During the socialist era, an inefficient and corrupt distribution sys-
tem, coupled with periodic droughts and floods, caused serious rice
shortages and periodic urban unrest. During the late 1970s, success
in increasing rice harvests was achieved through the promotion of
high-yield varieties under the Whole Township Extension Pro-
gram. To ensure a dependable supply of rice to politically restive ur-
ban areas, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has
expanded irrigation facilities, promoted double cropping, and opened
up new land for rice cultivation. But because there has been limited
investment in fertilizers, pesticides, farm mechanization, and storage
facilities, and most rice lands, being rain-fed, are hostage to the sea-
sonal monsoon, ensuring adequate rice supplies for a growing popu-
lation continues to be a major preoccupation of the military govern-
ment. In April 2003, the SPDC announced a radical liberalization
measure for the rice trade, which would allow farmers to sell rice to
private citizens at market prices, although it is unclear whether the
policy is being consistently implemented because coercive state pro-
curement seems to continue in various localities, such as Arakan
(Rakhine) State. In the mid-1990s, about 72 percent of Burma’s
cropland was devoted to rice, or 6.5 million hectares. As mentioned,
most rice lands are rain-fed, lying in the lowland, alluvial region of
the Irrawaddy Delta or in coastal areas of Arakan, while irrigated rice
fields, about 18 percent of the total, are found principally in Man-
dalay, Sagaing, and Pegu (Bago) Divisions.
As in other parts of Southeast and East Asia, paddy rice cultivation
in Burma requires the sowing of seed grain in nursery beds; after the
seeds have sprouted and started to grow, they are transplanted to am-
ply watered and plowed paddy fields, a task requiring intensive labor.
After about four months, the crop is ready for harvesting, which re-
quires more intensive labor. Because there is very little farm mecha-
nization in Burma, both transplanting and harvesting involve back-
breaking work, and farmers cannot harvest their crops without hiring
extra laborers. See also ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY,
STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE
PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT ERA.
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382 • RIOT POLICE

RIOT POLICE (LON HTEIN ). Detachments of special police, essen-

tially a paramilitary unit, used for crowd control, separate from the
regular People’s Police Force of the Ne Win era. Commanded by
Sein Lwin, they killed hundreds of protesting students in March and
June 1988, especially during the White Bridge Incident of March
16. After martial law was declared in Rangoon (Yangon) in early
August 1988, the Tatmadaw took over public order functions in the
capital. Citizens’ hopes that the army would act better than the Riot
Police were severely disappointed. See also DEMOCRACY SUM-
MER; MYANMAR POLICE FORCE; MYEINIGONE MARKET
INCIDENT; TEA SHOP INCIDENT.

ROAD TRANSPORT. In 1996–1997, according to government statis-

tics, Burma had a total of 30,153 kilometers (18,695 miles) of roads,
of which 16,439 kilometers (10,192 miles) were unpaved. Most ma-
jor roads run south to north, along the valleys of the Irrawaddy
(Ayeyarwady) and Sittang (Sittoung) Rivers. Road networks serv-
ing the states are much less developed than those in central Burma,
though an extensive road network, financed by China, has been built
in recent years in Shan State near the China–Burma border (appar-
ently not included in the above statistics). The condition of most
roads, including the paved ones, is poor, because of the severe rainy
season, wear-and-tear by overloaded trucks, and poor maintenance.
Rural communities are obliged by the authorities to keep roads in a
minimal state of repair, a major reason for forced labor.

ROHINGYAS. Muslims who live in Arakan (Rakhine) State, mostly

in the northern area bordering on Bangladesh. Unlike other ethnic mi-
norities, they are not recognized as citizens by the Burmese govern-
ment, but are considered illegal aliens. Numbering around 1.4 million,
they have been objects of systematic persecution by the Ne Win
regime and the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State
Peace and Development Council. In a classic “divide-and-rule”
strategy, both military regimes have enlisted Arakanese Buddhists in
attacks on Rohingya communities, and, after evicting the Muslims, al-
lowed the Arakaneses Buddhists to occupy their lands. In a 1978 op-
eration called Naga Min (“Dragon King”), the Tatmadaw swept
through Rohingya areas in search of illegal aliens, forcing over
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RUSSIA (SOVIET UNION), RELATIONS WITH • 383

200,000 (some sources say 300,000) to flee to Bangladesh, where they

were housed in refugee camps until largely repatriated under UN aus-
pices. In 1991–1992, a similar operation resulted in the flight of
around 280,000. In 2003, some 21,000 Rohingyas remained in
Bangladesh refugee camps, and an estimated 100,000 were illegal
aliens, not recognized by the Dhaka government, living outside the
camps. A large number of Rohingyas live in other countries, espe-
cially Malaysia and the Middle East.
The history of the Rohingyas is controversial because the Burmese
government claims they are descended from Bengali residents of
Chittagong District (now in eastern Bangladesh) who migrated into
Arakan after the British annexed it in 1824–1826, and thus cannot be
recognized as a legitimate Burmese ethnic nationality. A portion of
northern Arakan was a part of British Bengal until 1937. Rohingya
spokesmen claim their community is descended from Arabs and other
migrants who settled on the Arakan coast as early as the ninth cen-
tury CE. This contention is supported by historical scholarship show-
ing that Muslim communities flourished in the Kingdom of Arakan
(Rakhine) for many centuries before the coming of the British.
Moreover, Arakan occupied areas of what is now Bangladesh during
the 16th and 17th centuries.
During the opening months of World War II, there was severe
communal violence between Rohingyas and Arakanese Buddhists,
the former supporting the British and the latter the Japanese-backed
Burma Independence Army. After independence, mujahadin oper-
ating in northern Arakan tried to establish an autonomous state run
under Islamic law. Yet antigovernment insurgency among Rohingyas
has been on a comparatively small scale; in 1998, two factions of the
Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and the Arakan Rohingya
Islamic Front (ARIF), which operated from bases in Bangladesh,
joined together to form the Arakan Rohingya National Organiza-
tion (ARNO). See also CITIZENSHIP LAW; HUMAN RIGHTS IN
BURMA; MIN BIN; MRAUK-U.

RUSSIA (SOVIET UNION), RELATIONS WITH. Under Prime

Minister U Nu, the Burmese government sought to remain neutral
and nonaligned in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the Cold
War was beginning to intensify. Diplomatic relations with the Soviet
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384 • SAGAING

Union were established in 1949; the prime minister visited Moscow

in 1955, but did not refrain from telling Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev not to give moral and other support to the Communist
Party of Burma. Bilateral relations were troubled following the dis-
covery in the 1950s that the KGB was using the Soviet embassy in
Rangoon (Yangon) as a center for espionage. But the Soviets funded
a number of important aid projects, including a hospital in Taunggyi,
the new campus of Rangoon (Yangon) Institute of Technology in
Gyogon, Insein Township, and the Inya Lake Hotel, which for
many years was Burma’s most modern accommodation. During the
Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) era (1962–1988),
Moscow recognized the Ne Win regime as a “socialist-oriented
state,” although Ne Win did not espouse orthodox Marxist–Leninist
ideology. The Russians constructed a large dam in central Burma, the
Kyaikmauk Taung Dam, but it was poorly designed and never pro-
vided adequate water for irrigation.
The year 1988 saw the collapse of the BSPP socialist regime and
1991 the Soviet Union itself. Though suffering economic and politi-
cal ills, the new Russian Federation has sought to obtain influence
with the State Peace and Development Council—and also earn
some hard currency—by selling the regime Mig-29 fighter jets in
2001 and a 10-megawatt nuclear reactor the following year. The lat-
ter sale fueled fears, probably unfounded, that the military junta was
planning to develop nuclear weapons. Russia is also training several
hundred Tatmadaw personnel. Post-1988 Burma also has arms trade
ties with parts of the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine.

–S–

SAGAING. The capital of Sagaing Division, located on the west bank

of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, across from Mandalay. With
an estimated population of 60,798 in 1996, it is one of Burma’s his-
torically most important cities, having served as a royal capital in the
14th century and for a few years in the 18th century (1760–1764), un-
der the Konbaung Dynasty. The Sagaing Hills contain a large num-
ber of Buddhist monasteries, and the city is well known as a center
of study and meditation; many Buddhist nuns (silashin) reside there.
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SAGAING MASSACRE • 385

Nearby is the 17th-century Kaunghmudaw Pagoda. See also AMA-

RAPURA; AVA (INWA).

SAGAING DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14 states and divisions, with

an area of 93,701 square kilometers (36,178 square miles), making it
Burma’s second largest regional jurisdiction, and an estimated popu-
lation in 2000 of 5.3 million (1983 census figure: 3.8 million). The
divisional capital is Sagaing, which was briefly a royal capital and is
located across the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River from Man-
dalay. Presently, Sagaing is a major center for Buddhist study and
meditation, with many monasteries located on Sagaing Hill. Sagaing
Division comprises eight districts (Sagaing, Shwebo, Monywa,
Katha, Kalay, Tamu, Mawlaik, and Hkamti) and 37 townships. To
the north and west, it shares a long border with India, and the Chind-
win (Chindwinn) River runs through the division from north to
south. The Chindwin joins the Irrawaddy River at the place where
Sagaing, Magwe (Magway), and Mandalay Divisions meet.
Sagaing Division’s topography is complex: In the south, it is mostly
lowlands, but hills and mountains are found to the north and the west,
especially along the border with India (the Patkai Range and the
Naga Hills). Nwemauk Peak is one of Burma’s highest mountains, at
3,827 meters (12,553 feet). Although Burmans (Bamars) form the
majority of the population, there are also significant numbers of
Shans, Chins, and Nagas. Forest resources are abundant, although
they are being depleted. Important crops include rice, maize, wheat,
millet, groundnuts, sugarcane, sesame, pulses and beans, and sun-
flowers. Livestock raising and freshwater fisheries are also econom-
ically important. Many of Sagaing Division’s abundant resources
reach India by way of border trade.
Shwebo (Yadanatheinkha), located to the northwest of Sagaing
city, was the hometown and royal capital of King Alaungpaya, who
established the Konbaung Dynasty in 1752.

SAGAING MASSACRE (AUGUST 8, 1988). At the beginning of

the Four Eights Movement, several thousand demonstrators con-
verged on a police station in Sagaing and were shot at by police and
troops. Reportedly, 537 persons were killed (the official figure was
31), and witnesses report that police dumped many of the bodies
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386 • SALE

into the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River. Outside of Rangoon

(Yangon), the incident in Sagaing was probably the worst, in terms
of casualties, to occur during Democracy Summer.

SALE (SALAY). Located on the banks of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady)

River in Magwe (Magway) Division southwest of Chauk, Sale con-
tains more than one hundred religious monuments from the Pagan Dy-
nasty era. They are smaller in scale than the pagodas and pahto at Pa-
gan (Bagan), so some scholars believe they may have been built by
commoners or minor aristocrats. Little archeological research has been
done at Sale, and tourists visit the area infrequently.

SALWEEN (THANLWIN) RIVER. One of Burma’s major river sys-

tems, which flows in a north–south direction and bisects Shan State.
Its headwaters are located in Tibet, and its length inside of Burma is
1,600 kilometers. The Salween empties into the Gulf of Martaban
(Mottama) at Moulmein (Mawlamyine). Territories located east of
the river in Shan State, especially Kokang and the Wa districts,
have traditionally enjoyed great independence from the central gov-
ernment in Rangoon (Yangon) and have been major producers of
opium and other narcotics. Unlike the Irrawaddy, the turbulent Sal-
ween is navigable for only very short stretches and until recently has
played a negligible role in the country’s economy. However, in recent
years, there have been proposals to dam the river to generate hydro-
electric power and facilitate navigation. This is highly controversial
because the Salween is one of the last major unexploited rivers in
Southeast Asia, and damming its upper reaches would have a nega-
tive environmental impact on areas where Shans and other ethnic mi-
norities live. See also MEKONG RIVER.

SAMSARA. The cycle of rebirth and suffering that all living things
must endure until they attain nibbana (nirvana). In Buddhist cos-
mology, there are 31 levels of existence, ranging from the deepest
hell to heavenly realms inhabited by incorporeal beings. Simply put,
the sum total, or nature, of an individual’s meritorious or evil deeds
(kamma) over a lifetime determines the place of rebirth. Because
Buddhists do not believe in the existence of an immortal soul (the
doctrine of anatta), the manner in which a being passes from one life
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SANCTIONS • 387

to another has been a matter of considerable speculation. Ordinary

Burmese people often simply assume the existence of a soul separate
from the body, sometimes described as a butterfly spirit. Although
humans inhabit only the fifth level of existence, which is inferior to
that of gods or celestial beings, humans alone can achieve Enlighten-
ment and pass into nibbana. See also BUDDHA, GOTAMA;
KUTHO.

SAN YU, U (1918–ca. 2001). Close associate of Ne Win who served as

president of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma when the
former retired from that post in 1981. He retired from all his posts
following the Burma Socialist Programme Party’s Extraordinary
Congress in July 1988.

SANCTIONS. Following the seizure of power by the State Law and

Order Restoration Council (SLORC) on September 18, 1988,
Japan, European countries, and the United States halted the flow of
official development assistance (ODA). This was the beginning of in-
ternational sanctions against the new military government, which ac-
celerated during the next decade, especially after the SLORC refused
to recognize the results of the General Election of May 27, 1990.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi backed comprehensive sanctions as a
means of forcing the regime to democratize and halt human rights
abuses. The moral authority of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner
galvanized activists worldwide, who called for Burma to become the
“South Africa of the 1990s” (because the apartheid regime in that
country had supposedly been forced out of power by a coordinated
international boycott).
The member countries of the European Union have implemented
an array of sanctions, including suspension of all ODA, except for hu-
manitarian purposes, an arms embargo and halt to defense coopera-
tion, bans on the issuance of visas to high-ranking regime officials,
and withdrawal of GSP privileges from Burma (because of forced la-
bor). In 1996, the EU adopted a “Common Position” on Burma that
was reaffirmed and strengthened in 2000 and 2003. The U.S. govern-
ment approved a nonretroactive ban on American investment in the
country on May 20, 1997. Following the “Black Friday” Incident of
May 30, 2003, the Bush Administration signed into law the “Burmese
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388 • SANDA WIN

Freedom and Democracy Act,” a set of more severe measures that in-
clude a ban on imports from Burma and financial transactions be-
tween Americans and entities connected in any way to the State Peace
and Development Council (SPDC). A number of American states
and cities passed “selective purchasing laws” in the 1990s designed to
penalize companies that did business in Burma, but the Massachusetts
law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Although by 2003
some new Japanese ODA projects had been initiated, the Tokyo gov-
ernment did not approve aid on the scale given during the Ne Win era
before 1988 because of financial considerations and pressure from the
United States. Because of American, Japanese, and European influ-
ence over multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and the
Asian Development Bank, Burma was effectively barred from receiv-
ing their support, at least on a major scale.
Supporters of tough sanctions and “constructive engagement”
(capital investment in the country to promote social change and
eventual democratization) are bitterly at odds. In a 1997 essay in the
Hong Kong–based magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, Ma
Thanegi, a former associate of Daw Suu Kyi, claimed that sanctions
hurt the people without effectively changing the behavior of the
regime. Some observers argued that although business-oriented in-
vestment or aid should be (partially) banned, Burma desperately
needed humanitarian aid. Critics of sanctions noted that the 2003
trade embargo by Washington threw tens of thousands of women
factory workers out of work because Burma exported US$300–400
million in textiles to the United States, and that sanctions by West-
ern countries have had little real impact because the SPDC has close
economic ties with China, India, and members of the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations. In fact, it seems that neither sanctions
nor constructive engagement have had much influence on the be-
havior of the SPDC, which is willing to risk economic overdepen-
dence on China and to sacrifice the welfare of the people to keep it-
self in power. See also ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY,
STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE
PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA; “VISIT MYAN-
MAR YEAR”.

SANDA WIN (1953– ). Favorite daughter of Ne Win, whose failure to

pass an English-language examination in order to study at a medical
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SANGHA • 389

school in Britain was said to have led to a reinstatement of English in

Burmese school curricula. After the power seizure by the State Law
and Order Restoration Council, she was rumored to have formed
close ties with SLORC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt. However, even if it
existed, a “Sanda Win–Khin Nyunt axis” exercised little influence
over post-1988 politics. Widely criticized for building her own per-
sonal business empire, she was placed under house arrest following
discovery of a coup d’état attempt (March 2002) involving her hus-
band and sons. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER.

SANGHA. The Buddhist monastic order, whose members live accord-

ing to strict rules (vinaya) and have the solemn responsibility of con-
serving and promulgating the teachings of Gotama Buddha. They
are not “priests” in the sense of ministering to a congregation or serv-
ing as intermediaries between the human and divine worlds, although
laypeople may acquire merit (Burmese, kutho) through donations
(dana) to monks. Monks are also the primary teachers of the religion
(dhamma) to laypeople. As highly respected exemplars of Buddhist
wisdom and discipline, studying religious texts, the Tipitaka, and
practicing meditation, their primary task is to prepare for entry into
nibbana. Since at least the time of the Pagan (Bagan) Dynasty, they
have been the most highly respected group in Burmese society. In
contemporary Burma, they function as the most important social in-
stitution, with the possible exception of the Tatmadaw.
Although “forest monks” often live a hermetic existence, most
members of the Sangha live in monasteries (kyaung) in towns and
villages throughout Burma. In 1988, they numbered around 300,000,
including both rahan (ordained monks) and samanera (novices). The
Sangha in Burma is divided into nine orders (gaing), of which the
largest by far, containing almost 90 percent of all monks, is the Thud-
hamma. Of near equal importance is the Shwegyin sect, which was
patronized by King Mindon. Differences between the orders are not
so much doctrinal as interpretational, focusing on how the vinaya
rules should be followed (e.g., the proper wearing of saffron robes).
Members of the Sangha are often referred to as pongyi (“great
glory”), while the head monk of a monastery, or a highly respected
senior monk, is given the title sayadaw. Women cannot enter the
Sangha, although those who aspire to a religious life often become
the equivalent of nuns (silashin), without benefit of ordination. Like
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390 • SAW, U

monks, they shave their heads and live according to strict monastic
rules. Ordination of women was once practiced in Theravada coun-
tries but has died out.
Historically, the relationship between the Sangha and the Burmese
state has been complex, complementary, and sometimes antagonistic.
In precolonial times, Burmese kings assumed responsibility for re-
forming or purifying the monastic orders and appointing a senior
monk, the Thathanabaing, to oversee them. During the colonial pe-
riod, the British policy of religious neutrality is said to have con-
tributed to the monkhood’s poor discipline and low quality at the
time. Many monks, most notably U Ottama and U Wisara, became
politically active. In May 1980, Ne Win convened the Congregation
of the Sangha of All Orders to reassert state control over the monks.
Although young monks participated in the demonstrations of De-
mocracy Summer, the post-1988 military government has been
largely successful in gaining the compliance of conservative senior
members of the Sangha. See also ALL BURMA YOUNG MONKS
UNION; OVERTURNING THE OFFERING BOWL; SHINBYU.

SAW, U (1900–1948). A major colonial-era political leader, who took

the name Galon U Saw after serving as a defense attorney for Saya
San (Hsaya San) in 1931. He established the Myochit or Patriot
Party in 1938, and served as Burma’s prime minister in 1940–1941
under the system established by the Government of Burma Act.
However, he was arrested by the British on his way home from a
1941 trip to Britain and the United States after attempting to make
contact with the Japanese legation in Lisbon, Portugal, and spent
World War II imprisoned in Uganda, East Africa. Brought back to
Burma in 1946 by the sympathetic governor, Reginald Dorman-
Smith, he expected, with the governor’s backing, to assume a leader-
ship position, but he was eclipsed in popularity by Aung San, for
whom he developed a strong antagonism (in part stimulated by his
belief that Aung San attempted to have him assassinated). A member
of the delegation that went to London to confer with Prime Minister
Clement Attlee in January 1947, he refused to sign the Aung San–
Attlee Agreement. Gunmen loyal to U Saw assassinated Aung San
and six other leaders on July 19, 1947. U Saw apparently believed
that with Aung San and the rest of his Executive Council out of the
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SAWBWA • 391

way, it would be possible for him to become the first prime minister
of independent Burma. But U Saw was promptly arrested, put on
trial, and sentenced to death in December 1947, the sentence being
carried out in May of the following year. See also AUNG SAN, AS-
SASSINATION OF; SAYA SAN (HSAYA SAN) REBELLION; TAT.

SAW MAUNG, GENERAL (1928–1997). First Chairman of the State

Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC), concurrently
serving as prime minister, defense minister, and commander of the
Tatmadaw (senior general) following the SLORC seizure of power
on September 18, 1988. His military career began in 1949; after ris-
ing through the ranks, he became Tatmadaw chief of staff in 1985. A
hard-liner loyal to Ne Win and close to Sein Lwin, he was forced to
retire as SLORC chairman on April 23, 1992, for reasons of health
and was succeeded by the vice chairman, General Than Shwe.

SAWBWA (SAO PHA). The Burmese (Myanmar) language rendi-

tion of the Shan language word sao pha (chao fa in the Thai lan-
guage), literally meaning “lord of the heavens” and referring to the
hereditary rulers of the Shan States of eastern Burma or, more
broadly, also to the rulers of Shan (Tai)-dominated polities found
in other parts of Burma and neighboring countries, including
China’s Yunnan Province. The term is most frequently used to re-
fer to the 14–16 rulers of the major Shan States during the British
colonial period who, together with other rulers of lower rank,
myosa and ngwekhunhmu, were sometimes collectively called
Saophalong (Burmese, Sawbwagyi), “great lords.” The rulers en-
joyed a measure of autonomy under the British, although their
powers were significantly reduced by the establishment of the Fed-
erated Shan States in 1922. Before they relinquished their “feudal”
authority to the Union of Burma in April 1959, the sawbwa main-
tained their own courts, haw (royal palaces), and local administra-
tions, although they were carefully supervised by officials of the
colonial government. The Burmese, strongly influenced by social-
ist ideology, tended to view the traditionally minded sawbwa as
feudal relics who exploited their downtrodden subjects, but in fact
many of them were well educated, quite popular, and played im-
portant roles in national politics during the U Nu period and the
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392 • SAYA SAN (HSAYA SAN) REBELLION

Shan resistance against the Ne Win regime. These included Sao

Shwe Taik, sawbwa of Yawnghwe, who was the first president of
the Union of Burma, and his wife, the Yawnghwe Mahadevi (a ti-
tle for the sawbwa’s wife) Sao Nang Hearn Kham, who served as
leader of the first Shan State Army, established in 1964. See also
PANGLONG CONFERENCE; SHAN STATE.

SAYA SAN (HSAYA SAN) REBELLION (1930–1932). The largest

rural uprising during the British colonial period, caused by economic
distress, harsh taxation measures, and land foreclosures. Its leader,
Saya San (Hsaya San), was a practitioner of traditional medicine,
alchemy, and astrology who was also an active member of the radi-
cal faction of the General Council of Burmese Associations
(GCBA). Before the revolt, he served as the chairman of a special
GCBA committee surveying abuses of power by government offi-
cials and traveled to different parts of Lower Burma to compile a
record of such abuses. This experience, and the general ineffective-
ness of the GCBA’s nonviolent tactics, convinced him that only an
armed uprising could improve the lot of Burmese villagers. Quietly,
he established a “Galon Army,” and initiated a revolt on December
23, 1930, in Tharrawaddy District, north of Rangoon (Yangon) in
what is now Pegu (Bago) Division. Among the rebels’ first actions
was the killing of local village headmen, who were widely perceived
as instruments of British rule.
Although Saya San’s headquarters at Alantaung (“Flag Hill”) in
the Pegu Yoma was captured by colonial troops on December 31, the
revolt spread to other parts of Lower Burma, including Insein, Hen-
zada (Hinthada), Pegu (Bago), Toungoo (Taungoo), Prome (Pyay),
Pyapon, and Thayetmyo, and also to the Shan States. Resorting to
guerrilla tactics, the insurgents offered stubborn resistance to colonial
police and military forces until mid-1932. According to British re-
ports, rebel activity was so widespread that authority had collapsed in
some districts.
After the capture of his headquarters, Saya San fled to Upper
Burma and then to the Shan States, hiding out at Nawngkio in Hsi-
paw. When his forces were defeated in an engagement with colonial
troops, he attempted to get to his hometown of Shwebo but was be-
trayed and captured in August 1931. Brought before a Special Tri-
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SAYA SAN (HSAYA SAN) REBELLION • 393

bunal, he was sentenced to death by hanging on August 28. The sen-

tence was carried out on November 28 at Tharrawaddy jail. Both Dr.
Ba Maw and “Galon” U Saw gained national prominence by de-
fending him.
The revolt caught the British by surprise. They brought reinforce-
ments from the Indian Army to Burma, where they were combined
with military police, newly recruited civilian police, and Karen
(Kayin) and Chin levies to create a force of more than 23,000 men.
Martial law was imposed. More than 1,300 insurgents were killed,
9,000 arrested, and 126 rebels, including Saya San, executed. In
some districts, the colonial police used methods similar to the “Four
Cuts” policy of the Tatmadaw to deprive the guerrilla resistance of
local support networks, including forced relocation.
The revolt was poorly organized and equipped; peasant rebels had
few rifles, and, to protect themselves from British bullets, resorted to
magical tattoos, spells, and amulets. The official British report on the
uprising attributed it to the gullibility and superstition of Burmese
villagers and described Saya San as an opportunistic charlatan. Little
attention was paid to peasant grievances, including rice prices so low
that farmers fell deeper and deeper into debt and did not have enough
income to feed their families, a situation that the colonial government
did next to nothing to alleviate. Many of the districts where rebels re-
ceived the most popular support were those in which farmers had lost
their land to Indian moneylenders. Peasant resentment was also
stimulated by the government’s strict prohibitions against their using
timber from forest reserves.
The colonial authorities made much of the fact that Saya San des-
ignated himself Thupannaka Galuna Yaza (the Galon King) and con-
structed a “palace” at Alantaung, reflecting his desire to expel the
Westerners and restore the old order. Although his thinking may have
been reactionary, it reflected the widespread perception among ordi-
nary Burmese that the colonial government was illegitimate.
Many urban Burmese, including students at Rangoon (Yangon)
University, admired Saya San and his followers. But a new genera-
tion of nationalists, including those who joined the Dobama Asiay-
one, recognized that a restoration of the precolonial order was im-
possible. When Aung San and the Thirty Comrades received mili-
tary training from the Japanese on the eve of World War II, their
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394 • SAYADAW

goal was to establish a modern state, defended by a modern army. In

U Maung Maung’s words, “[T]he Saya San Rebellion, fundamentally
the people’s revolution, ended an epoch of modern Burmese history,
a period of uneasy alliance of traditionalism with modern politics”
(From Sangha to Laity, 1980, 105).

SAYADAW (HSAYADO). In the Burmese (Myanmar) language, the

term literally means “royal teacher,” but it is used today to refer to
senior or highly respected members of the Sangha, including the
heads of monasteries (kyaung). When speaking Burmese, a layperson
will use the term to address a senior monk, that is, as a title. The
sayadaw is renowned for his superior knowledge of the Pali Canon
or meditation techniques and sometimes has a national or even in-
ternational reputation, for example the Mahasi Sayadaw. See also
PONGYI.

SCOTT, JAMES GEORGE (1851–1935). A prominent writer and

British colonial civil servant. Born in Scotland, the son of a minister,
he began his career as a journalist in Malaya, was a schoolteacher at
Saint John’s College in Rangoon (Yangon), and also worked as a
correspondent for the Rangoon Gazette, writing under the name
Shway Yoe (“Golden Honest”). His most famous book, The Burman:
His Life and Notions, was published in 1882 and introduced British
audiences to a hitherto unknown land. After Upper Burma was oc-
cupied during the Third Anglo-Burmese War, Scott, having passed
the bar examinations, returned to Burma and served on the Burma
Commission, retiring in 1910. He was almost entirely involved in the
Shan States, becoming Superintendent for the Northern Shan States
in 1891 and Superintendent for the Southern Shan States from 1902
to 1910. Scott established Taunggyi as the administrative center for
the Shan States (it is now the state capital). He served briefly as
chargé d’affaires in Bangkok in the mid-1890s.
Every inch an imperialist and a product of his times, Scott had re-
markable courage and the ability to communicate effectively with lo-
cal leaders, including the Shan (Tai) princes, or sawbwas. He is said
to have introduced soccer (football) to Burma; it is now the country’s
favorite game. His encyclopedic knowledge of Burma and especially
the Shan States is reflected in his five-volume Gazetteer of Upper
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SEIN LWIN • 395

Burma and the Shan States (1901) and Burma: A Handbook of Prac-
tical Information (1906, 1921). Although a century old, these classics
are still consulted and quoted by Burma watchers and travelers today,
including his comments on the remote and little-known Was.

SEAGRIM, HUGH P. (1909–1944). British officer who worked with

Force 136 during World War II to establish an anti-Japanese base in
the hills of what is now Karen (Kayin) State, near the Thai–Burma
border. Operating on his own with a small force of Karens (Kayins)
after the Japanese occupied Burma in early 1942, he established ra-
dio communication with India in October of the following year and
sent a Karen agent to Rangoon (Yangon) to contact Karens and anti-
Japanese Thakins in the city. Sent on a punitive expedition to locate
Seagrim’s base in the Karen hills, the Japanese Kempeitai (military
police) caused such a reign of terror that Seagrim decided to give
himself up in order to spare the Karens further retaliation. He was ex-
ecuted at Rangoon on September 22, 1944, but he and his Karen
comrades had succeeded in opening up a line of communication be-
tween the British in India and disaffected Burman and Karen ele-
ments. His story is told by Ian Morrison in Grandfather Longlegs,
and to this day he remains a hero among the Karens. See also
JAPANESE OCCUPATION.

SECURITY AND ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEES (SACs).

During the Revolutionary Council period (1962–1973), administra-
tive bodies whose chairmen were military officers, found on the state/
division, township, and ward/village tract levels of local and regional
administration. SACs were placed in a hierarchy below the Security and
Administration Central Committee, which was directly responsible to
the Revolutionary Council chaired by General Ne Win. This “transi-
tional,” military-dominated governmental structure anticipated the hier-
archy of Law and Order Councils (after 1997, Peace and Development
Councils) established after the State Law and Order Restoration
Council seized power in September 1988. See also ADMINISTRA-
TION, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA.

SEIN LWIN (1924– ). A close associate of Ne Win who briefly served

as chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) and
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396 • SEX INDUSTRY IN BURMA

as Burma’s president in 1988. He joined the Burma Defence Army

in 1943, and after the war served in the Fourth Burma Rifles under
Ne Win’s command. He killed Saw Ba U Gyi during operations
against the Karen National Union insurgents in 1950, and com-
manded the troops who fired on Rangoon (Yangon) University stu-
dent demonstrators during the July 7 Incident in 1962, causing
many fatalities. As commander of the Riot Police (Lon Htein), he
was responsible for the shooting of hundreds of student demonstra-
tors in March 1988, earning himself the name “the Butcher of Ran-
goon.” Following the BSPP Extraordinary Congress on July
23–25, 1988, he was unexpectedly promoted to the two highest state
and party posts. The Four Eights Movement, organized by Min Ko
Naing and other student activists, led to his resignation on August 12,
but at the cost of hundreds more casualties in Rangoon (Yangon) and
elsewhere. Since 1988, he has lived in obscurity. Though valued by
Ne Win for his loyalty and willingness to do the regime’s dirty work,
he was universally hated. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER; TEA
SHOP INCIDENT; WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT.

SEX INDUSTRY IN BURMA. The commercialization of sex and the

victimization of “sex industry workers” have become major prob-
lems in many Southeast Asian countries, including Burma. During
the Burma Socialist Programme Party period (1962–1988), the
country’s isolation from its neighbors inhibited the growth of a sex
industry, but this changed after the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council ended socialist policies of self-sufficiency in 1988 and
promoted international economic ties. A report in late 1993 by Hu-
man Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization
(NGO), disclosed that, by that time, an estimated 20,000 Burmese
women, mostly members of ethnic minorities, were working in Thai
brothels, and that the number was increasing by 10,000 annually.
Most of the women suffered harsh working conditions and abuse, and
many were exposed to AIDS. By the beginning of the 21st century,
prostitution inside Burma was also recognized as a growing problem;
because of deteriorating economic conditions, women entered the sex
industry not only in Rangoon (Yangon) and other large cities, but
also in rural areas. Along with the use of heroin, the domestic sex in-
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SHAN STATE • 397

dustry was a major cause of the country’s AIDS epidemic, one of

Asia’s worst. Critics of American sanctions against the State Peace
and Development Council argued that the July 2003 embargo on ex-
ports to the United States closed down textile factories and forced
many unemployed women workers to turn to prostitution. See also
HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

SHAN LANGUAGE. A member of the Tai-Kadai group of languages.

It is monosyllabic and tonal, the number of tones more complex than
the Burmese (Myanmar) language of the Sino-Tibetan group. The
same combination of consonants and vowels, pronounced with dif-
ferent tones, has different meanings. Most speakers live in Shan
State, with other speakers in Kachin State, Kayah (Karenni) State,
and Burma Proper. The Shan language and those of Thailand and
Laos are closely related; important dialects include those of the Tai
Khun of Keng Tung and the Hkamti Shan in Kachin State. The Shan
script has been influenced by the Burmese writing system.

SHAN NATIONALITIES LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY (SNLD).

In the General Election of May 27, 1990, the SNLD was the politi-
cal party that won the second largest number of seats, 23 out of 56
contested in Shan State, surpassed nationwide only by the National
League for Democracy (392 seats).

SHAN PLATEAU. A large elevated region, with an average altitude of

900 meters (3,000 feet), located in Shan State between the valley of
the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River to the west and the Salween
(Thanlwin) River to the east. It is criss-crossed by several mountain
ranges, running generally in a north–south direction.

SHAN STATE. In land area, the largest of Burma’s states and divi-
sions, covering 155,801 square kilometers or (155 square miles). It
contains 11 districts (Taunggyi, Loilem, Lashio, Muse, Kyaukme,
Kunlong, Laukkai, Keng Tung, Monghsat, Monghpyak, and
Tachilek), which are subdivided into 54 townships. Shan State is bi-
sected by the Salween (Thanlwin) River. West of the Salween, the
Shan Plateau, an upland region with an average elevation of 900
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398 • SHAN STATE

meters, comprises most of its land area. There are rugged mountain
ranges east of the river and in the northern and western parts of the
state. Shan State borders Mandalay and Sagaing Divisions to the
west, Kachin State to the north, and Karen (Kayin) and Kayah
(Karenni) States to the south. The state forms part or all of Burma’s
international borders with China to the northeast, Laos to the east
(the two are separated by the Mekong River), and Thailand to the
southeast. The largest lake is Inle Lake, located near the state capi-
tal, Taunggyi.
The 1983 census, the last one taken, recorded 3,716,841 inhabi-
tants; exact figures on the present population are not available, but it
was estimated at 4.8 million in 2000. The flow of refugees into
neighboring Thailand since the mid-1990s has probably had a signif-
icant demographic impact. Aside from Taunggyi, which in 1983 had
108,231 inhabitants (134,023 estimated in 1996), major cities and
towns include Keng Tung, Hsipaw, Lashio, and Kalaw.
Shan State is one of Burma’s most ethnically diverse regions.
The Shans (Tai), who comprise around half of the population, are
valley dwellers who cultivate rice and have adopted Indo-Buddhist
civilization. Their states, traditionally governed by sawbwas and
other local dynastic rulers and ideologically and institutionally
similar to those of the Burmans and Mons, trace their roots to at
least to the 13th century, and probably earlier. Other important eth-
nic groups (there are around 35 in all) include the Pa-O, Palaung,
Kachin, Wa, Lahu, Akha, and Kokang Chinese. In contrast to the
valley-dwelling Shans, these groups commonly live in upland ar-
eas and traditionally practice shifting agriculture (taungya),
growing dry rice, buckwheat, and maize. Shan State cash crops in-
clude tea, coffee, oranges, pineapples, and sugarcane. Its forests,
once covering three-quarters of the land area, have been heavily
depleted. Many of the upland peoples, especially the Wa and
Kokang Chinese in northeastern Shan State, grow opium poppies.
Although quantities of exports and acreage under poppy cultiva-
tion have declined in recent years, Shan State is still one of the
world’s major sources of opium, heroin, and amphetamines.
After the British pacified the region in the late 1880s, they gov-
erned what is now Shan State indirectly, allowing the rulers of 43
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SHAN STATE • 399

constituent states (in 1905, 15 sawbwas and 28 chiefs of lower rank,

known as myosas and ngwekhunhmu) considerable autonomy; in
1922, the Federated Shan States was established, with its adminis-
trative center at Taunggyi. However, in contrast to Burma Proper,
the Shan States were not economically developed, with the excep-
tion of the lead and silver mines at Bawdwin (Namtu). Although the
Burma Road ran from Lashio to the Burma–China border, the Shan
States were one of the few areas in Burma to escape devastation dur-
ing World War II, its rulers recognizing the Japanese occupation.
The Japanese gave the eastern Shan States of Keng Tung and Mong
Pan to their ally, Thailand, but the remaining states were included in
the nominally “independent” Burma proclaimed by them in August
1943. At the February 1947 Panglong Conference, the Shan rulers
agreed to join the Union of Burma, although they gained important
concessions embodied in the Constitution of 1947, including the
right to secede 10 years after independence. The first president of
the Union of Burma was a Shan, Sao Shwe Taik, sawbwa of
Yawnghwe. In April 1959, the Shan rulers agreed to relinquish their
“feudal” authority, though they remained popular with their former
subjects, and some of them became involved in antigovernment in-
surgency.
Following the Kuomintang (KMT, Guomindang) intrusions of
1950, Shan State became a war zone. Tatmadaw units sent to fight
the KMT often wreaked havoc on local populations, leading to the
first Shan antigovernment insurgency, the Noom Suk Harn (“Young
Brave Warriors”), started in 1958. By the 1960s, especially after the
abolition of the 1947 Constitution’s parliamentary and semifederal
institutions by the Revolutionary Council, Shan State had become
host to a growing number of local militias and warlord armies, in-
cluding the nationalist Shan State Army and Ka Kwe Ye units, such
as those led by Lo Hsing-han and Khun Sa, two drug-dealing war-
lords later notorious as “kings of the Golden Triangle.” In January
1968, the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) established a base
along the Shan State–China border, which was generously supported
by the People’s Republic of China and became the best-equipped
and most powerful insurgency fighting the central government dur-
ing the 1970s and 1980s. Following the CPB’s breakup in early 1989,
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400 • SHAN STATE ARMY

its constituent ethnic units signed cease-fires with the State Law and
Order Restoration Council. The cease-fires, especially one agreed
to by Khun Sa, commander of the Mong Tai Army, in January 1996,
fundamentally changed the balance of power in Shan State. The post-
1988 military regime was able to exert unprecedented power in cen-
tral and southern parts of the state, ordering massive forced reloca-
tions and causing the movement of hundreds of thousands of
refugees to Thailand; moreover, the drug-dealing United Wa State
Army, formally an ally of the State Peace and Development Coun-
cil (SPDC), became the most powerful ethnic armed group, with ter-
ritory along the Thai–Burma border as well as the border with China.
Many areas of Shan State are now sites of SPDC-sponsored Border
Area Development programs, including an opium poppy crop sub-
stitution project in Kokang. Following the loss of their traditional
rulers and protectors, the Shans have become targets for regime-
instigated human rights abuses, as well as attempts by the central
government to “Burmanize” their traditional culture and religion. See
also CHINESE IN BURMA; FEDERAL MOVEMENT; FRONTIER
AREAS; INTHA; MINERAL RESOURCES; PANTHAYS; SHAN
NATIONALITIES LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY (SNLD); SHAN
STATE ARMY (SOUTH); TAUNGGYI.

SHAN STATE ARMY (SSA) (SOUTH). An ethnic armed group that

continues to resist the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC). After Khun Sa signed a cease-fire with the SPDC’s pred-
ecessor, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, in Janu-
ary 1996, the Shan State Army (South) was constituted from con-
tingents of the drug warlord’s Mong Tai Army. Its commander is
Colonel Yord Serk, who has fought as an insurgent since the age of
17. Its armed strength is estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000
guerrillas. In contrast to Khun Sa’s armed group, the SSA (South)
claims to be suppressing the traffic in opium and heroin in the ter-
ritories it controls. It operates in central Shan State, and the post-
1988 military regime has subjected as many as 300,000 Shans in
the region to forced relocation in an effort to undercut the SSA
(South)’s popular bases of support. It has also encouraged the
United Wa State Army to enclose and contain the Shan guerrillas,
which has caused border tensions and fighting with Thailand. The
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SHAN STATES • 401

SSA (South), formerly known as the Shan United Revolutionary

Army (SURA), has made alliances with other non-cease-fire
groups, the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Pro-
gressive Party, and the Chin National Front. See also HUMAN
RIGHTS IN BURMA.

SHAN STATES. The term refers to both to a unique kind of polity estab-
lished by Shans (Tai) in various parts of Burma since at least the 13th
century and a group of such polities, known as the Federated Shan
States after 1922, which enjoyed a measure of autonomy under their
own rulers—commonly known as sawbwa (sao pha), myoza, and
ngwekhunhmu—during the British colonial period.
Known as möng in the Shan language, the traditional Shan polity
was established in valleys and lowland areas where wetland rice could
be cultivated. Ideologically and institutionally, it resembled the states of
lowland Burma, especially its promotion of close ties between the state
and Sangha. Principally in what is now Shan State but also in parts of
Kachin State and other areas, Shans lived clustered in or around a for-
tified city and exercised influence over adjacent hill peoples, such as the
Palaung, Wa, and Akha, a hierarchical distribution of power and au-
thority that, on a higher level, included the möng’s ceremonial and
sometimes actual subordination to a larger state, such as the Konbaung
Dynasty or the British colonial regime. Located near Burman (Bamar)
power centers, the western states of Hsipaw, Hsenwi, and Tawngpeng
were open to Burmese influences, while Keng Tung, east of the Sal-
ween (Thanlwin) River, was subject to more influence from Thailand
and even China. Within Shan society was a marked distinction between
the noble and commoner classes, as well as a separate group of “out-
castes,” slaves and persons in “unclean” professions, such as butchery.
Shan chronicles record the establishment of an important state at Mo-
gaung in present-day Kachin State in 1215. Keng Tung was established
in the late 13th century.
Following the Third Anglo-Burmese War, the British succeeded
in “pacifying” the Shan States by 1888; the Shan States Act, passed
the following year, established a system of British residents responsi-
ble to the Superintendents of the Northern and Southern Shan States.
The rulers were given “writs of authority” (sanads) that confirmed
their claims to the throne and were promised minimal interference in
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402 • SHAN STATES

their internal affairs as long as they enforced law and order. Accord-
ing to the Imperial Gazeteer of India, published in 1905, the Northern
Shan States consisted of 5 entities as well as the remote and unsettled
Wa states, and the Southern Shan States consisted of 38 entities, for
a total in the two areas of 43 states. After World War II, Kokang was
also recognized by the British as a full-fledged Shan State. Only
around 14 to 16 states (including Kokang after 1945) were ruled by
full-fledged sawbwa, the others being ruled by the lower-ranking
chiefs known as myosa and ngwekhunhmus. In the early 20th century,
the colonial authorities also recognized the existence of four Shan
States lying within the districts of Burma Proper: Mong Mit,
Hsawnghsup, Singaling Hkamti, and Hkamti-long.
Some Shan states were extensive: Keng Tung encompassed over
31,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) and had more than
190,000 residents in the early 20th century. But others were tiny prin-
cipalities, such as Namtok, which comprised only 32 square kilome-
ters (20 square miles) and had a population of 778 (1905 figures). But
they were structurally similar and shared these similarities with Shan
polities outside of Burma, such as those in northern Thailand, Laos,
and China’s Yunnan Province.
The establishment of the Federated Shan States and the Federal
Council of Shan Chiefs in 1922 marked a trend toward centralization
and rationalization. Each ruler was obliged to remit part of his tax
revenues into a common Federal Fund, which paid for public works,
the police, and social services. Shan rulers, including the first presi-
dent of the Union of Burma, Sao Shwe Taik, signed the agreement
that resulted from the 1947 Panglong Conference, which recognized
their traditional status and the autonomy of their polities. During the
1950s, the imposition of martial law by the central government fol-
lowing the incursions of the Kuomintang and Tatmadaw abuses of
local populations eroded the rulers’ authority. In March 1959, the
Shan State Council, composed of the rulers, agreed to relinquish their
“feudal” privileges. In April, each of them signed an agreement with
the Caretaker Government of General Ne Win terminating his sta-
tus, in exchange for compensation. The long and colorful history of
the Shan States was at an end, but the consequence was not modern-
ization and development but rather an anarchic situation in which the
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SHANS • 403

Shans and other ethnic minorities have endured war and oppression.
See also CONSTITUTION OF 1947; FEDERAL MOVEMENT;
HAW; KARENNI STATES.

SHANS (TAI). Burma’s most numerous ethnic minority, comprising an

estimated 9 percent of the total population (more than 4 million peo-
ple). They call themselves Tai. The Burmese name for them, Shan,
apparently shares a common origin with Siam, the old country name
for Thailand. The Shan language belongs to the Tai-Kadai group.
As members of the larger Tai ethnic-linguistic group, they share close
affinities with the people of Thailand and Laos, as well as Tai mi-
norities in Vietnam, China, and India. Although most Shans live in
Shan State, where other minority groups have been assimilated to
their language and culture over the centuries, they are also found in
significant numbers in Kachin State, Kayah (Karenni) State, and
parts of Burma Proper. There are important dialectical and cultural
differences among them, particularly between those who live in west-
ern Shan State, where they have been subject to strong Burmese in-
fluences, and the Tai Khun of Keng Tung, whose location remote
from the center of Burman power has resulted in closer ties to the
northern Thais and Chinese. A community of Hkamti Shans lives in
Kachin State’s Hukwang Valley and the upper reaches of the Chind-
win (Chindwinn) River.
The history of Shan/Tai migration into Burma is unclear: It may
have occurred as early as the first millennium CE, and involved the
fortunes of the non-Han Chinese state of Nan Chao. By 1215, a Shan
state had been established at Mogaung, in what is now Kachin State.
The Mongol emperor Khubilai Khan’s conquest of what is now
China’s Yunnan Province in the mid-13th century caused further
waves of Tai migration.
Apart from language, a number of features constitute the distinct-
ness of the Shans: Their religion is a distinct variety of Theravada
Buddhism, with its own Sangha, holy sites, and artistic/architectural
expression; unlike the “hill tribes” with whom they often live in prox-
imity, they are cultivators of wetland rice; their political organiza-
tion, a hereditary “feudal” system under a prince or sawbwa (saohpa)
who was based in a fortified city-state (möng), is unique, although it
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404 • SHIN ARAHAN

has been adopted by other ethnic groups, such as the Karenni; and
their material culture includes distinct characteristics, such as the
wearing of trousers rather than a longyi. From the 14th to the 16th
centuries, the Shans were the most powerful group in Upper Burma,
although after the rise of the Toungoo Dynasty they were driven out,
and many Shan principalities fell under Burmese suzerainty.
Since Burma became independent in 1948, the Shans have endured
unbroken war and insurgency; the State Law and Order Restora-
tion Council/State Peace and Development Council has used a “di-
vide and rule” strategy (cease-fires) in Shan State since 1988 that has
weakened their armed groups and exposed them to major human
rights violations and compulsory cultural “Burmanization.” Many
Shans have left Burma to become “invisible” refugees in Thailand,
hoping to find employment and refuge from persecution.

SHIN ARAHAN (ca. 11th CENTURY CE). A Mon monk, whom

King Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077), founder of the Pagan (Bagan) Dy-
nasty, charged with converting his subjects to the orthodox doctrines
of Theravada Buddhism. He was also patronized by Anawrahta’s
successor, Kyanzittha (r. 1044–1112), and his image can be found
inside the Ananda Pahto, which Kyanzittha ordered built.

SHINBYU. The major life-cycle ritual for nearly all male believers in
Burmese Buddhism, the initiation of boys into the Sangha, al-
though their sojourn as koyin or novice monks in a monastery is
usually brief. The ceremony begins with a festive procession, the
initiates being dressed in princely garb, like Gotama Buddha be-
fore his renunciation of the world. The ritual usually entails con-
siderable expense, and sponsors gain much kutho (merit), because
shinbyu is seen as a means of propagating the religion. Parents play
an important role in the initiation, but when the boy’s head is
shaved and he dons the robes of a monk, they must do him obei-
sance. Through shinbyu the boy becomes a “dignified person.” A
life-cycle ritual for small girls, ear boring, often occurs at the same
time as the initiation. Although it is a common practice for boys in
Theravada Buddhist countries to spend some time in a monastery, it
is especially important in Burma.
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“SHOE QUESTION” • 405

SHINSAWBU, QUEEN (r. 1453–1472). Burmese name for a Mon

Queen of the Wareru Dynasty, called Bannya Thaw in the Mon Lan-
guage. A daughter of Razadarit, she is renowned as a wise ruler and
a devout Buddhist. Shinsawbu was married to the Burman king of
Ava (Inwa) but fled to Hanthawaddy (modern-day Pegu [Bago]) in
1430, accompanied by two members of the Sangha who were her
teachers, one of whom was Dhammazedi. Religiously inclined, she
donated her weight in gold to gilding the stupa of the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda, raised its height, and carried out extensive renovations of
the pagoda grounds. After retiring from public life, she resided at
Dagon, within sight of the pagoda. Her son-in-law, the former monk
Dhammazedi (r. 1472–1492), succeeded her in 1472. Together, they
are two of the most illustrious Mon monarchs, and she was the only
woman to have ruled a major Burmese state.

SHITTHAUNG (SITTAUNG) TEMPLE. One of the most important

Buddhist temples located in Mrauk-U (Myohaung) in Arakan
(Rakhine). Its name means “eighty thousand images.” Built by King
Min Bin in 1536, it is of rectangular shape, built of stone (unlike the
monuments of Pagan [Bagan], which are largely of brick), and is
surmounted by numerous bell-shaped stupas. The temple’s design,
and the images and carvings found within, are representative of a dis-
tinct Arakanese style of Buddhist art and architecture.

“SHOE QUESTION.” As in other Asian countries, it is the custom in

Burma for people to doff their shoes before entering a house; on
pagoda platforms and other sites associated with Buddhism, neither
footwear nor stockings may be worn. These customs became issues
in relations between the Burmese and British on two occasions in the
19th and 20th centuries. During the last years of King Mindon’s
reign in the 1870s, the British Indian government ordered its resident
in Mandalay to refuse to take off his footwear when attending royal
audiences, on the grounds that this was humiliating. As a result, the
king refused to see any British envoys in person, as did his son and
successor Thibaw, greatly hampering diplomatic communications.
The shoe question emerged in a different form in the second decade
of the 20th century when the Young Men’s Buddhist Association and
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406 • SHWE DAGON PAGODA

other groups called for strict observance of the ban on footwear in

pagodas; a respected member of the Sangha, the Ledi Sayadaw,
wrote a treatise on the issue, “On the Impropriety of Wearing Shoes
on Pagoda Platforms,” which generated nationwide support for the
ban. After a violent incident in which monks attacked shoe-wearing
European visitors in Mandalay in 1919, the colonial government rec-
ognized the authority of pagoda trustees to exclude such persons. An
exception was made for policemen and soldiers on duty, which was
much resented by the Burmese.
Many British held the opinion that because they had previously
been allowed to visit pagodas with their shoes on, the ban was sim-
ply a way of humiliating them; the matter stirred up considerable bit-
terness between British and Burmese, and before independence in
1948, most Westerners avoided such sites as the Shwe Dagon Pagoda
that had previously been major tourist attractions. For the Burmese,
success in getting the government to recognize the ban was a moral
victory against the seemingly all-powerful British Empire.

SHWE DAGON PAGODA. Although it is not the tallest Buddhist

pagoda in Burma, a distinction enjoyed by the Shwemawdaw
Pagoda in Pegu (Bago), the Shwe Dagon is regarded as the coun-
try’s holiest Buddhist site, a place of pilgrimage and devotion for
millions of people who congregate at its base each year. It is lo-
cated on Singuttara (Theingottara) Hill, the southernmost elevation
of the Pegu (Bago) Yoma mountain range, north of the central
business district of modern Rangoon (Yangon) and west of Kan-
dawgyi Lake. According to legend, Gotama Buddha gave eight of
his hairs to two traveling merchants from a country known as
Ukkala or Okkala, identified as the region around Rangoon. When
they returned home from India, they located the hill and built a
chamber to enshrine the holy relics with the assistance of nats, and
discovered relics of the three earlier Buddhas of the present era:
the staff of the Kakussanda Buddha, the robe of the Kassapa Bud-
dha, and a water filter belonging to the Konagamana Buddha.
Devotees believe the relics of all four Buddhas are still housed
within the pagoda, giving it unmatched religious and devotional
significance. Another legend relates that the Indian Emperor Asoka
visited the Shwe Dagon in the third century BCE and sponsored its
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SHWE DAGON PAGODA, ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT • 407

repair. A small Mon fishing settlement, Dagon, grew up around the

site of the pagoda as early as the 11th century CE, giving the
pagoda its name (“Golden Dagon”).
Over the centuries, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda received generous do-
nations from both Mon and Burman (Bamar) monarchs. The 15th-
century Mon queen Shinsawbu was the first to gild the pagoda, of-
fering her weight in gold and also donating a hti or umbrella to the
pagoda’s summit; her successor, Dhammazedi, carried out further
renovation and donated a series of stone inscriptions that relate the
pagoda’s history. Both kings Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung, Bur-
man rulers who established their capital at Pegu (Bago) in the 16th
century, carried out extensive renovations. After the pagoda was
damaged in an earthquake in 1768, King Hsinbyushin repaired it,
donated a hti, and raised it to its present height of 99 meters (326
feet). King Mindon donated a new hti for the pagoda in 1871, but the
British authorities refused to allow him to come down to Rangoon to
present it in person because this might indicate recognition of his sov-
ereignty over Lower as well as Upper Burma. The State Peace and
Development Council carried out extensive renovation of the
pagoda in 1999, including replacement of Mindon’s hti. See also
SHWE DAGON PAGODA, ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT;
SHWE DAGON PAGODA, POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF.

SHWE DAGON PAGODA, ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT. The

Shwe Dagon Pagoda is dense with religious and symbolic meaning.
In physical terms, it can be understood in terms of three components:
the 99-meter (326-foot)-high stupa, said to contain the relics of the
four Buddhas of the present era, including eight hairs of Gotama Bud-
dha; the pagoda platform upon which it is built, which is roughly rec-
tangular in shape and five hectares in area; and clusters of devotion
halls (tazaung), shrines, smaller stupas, and other sites that crowd the
platform and reflect both the complexity of the Burmese Buddhist tra-
dition and its syncretic association with subordinate non-Buddhist be-
liefs in gods and spirits (nats) and occult figures (weikza).
The stupa is believed to be solid, though a newspaper article pub-
lished in 1968 tells of a person who claimed to have entered a tunnel
many years before and discovered the “Relic Chamber” deep within.
During their occupation of the pagoda platform, the British dug tunnels
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408 • SHWE DAGON PAGODA, ARCHITECTURE AND LAYOUT

inside it. It is covered on the outside by gold leaf, which is replaced at

regular intervals by devotees, although the “banana bud” is covered
with gold plates. The total amount of gold adorning the stupa is esti-
mated to be over three tons.
The bell-shaped stupa, raised above the platform on a plinth, is
built up on successive, tapering levels, each with a distinct name re-
lating to its physical appearance: the “square” and “octagonal ter-
races,” the “bands,” the “bell,” the “twisted turban” molding, the “lo-
tus,” the “banana bud,” the “umbrella” (hti ), and the “diamond bud.”
Both the seven-tiered umbrella and the diamond bud are elaborate
metal structures, studded with gemstones, bells, and small Buddha
images. A flag-like device called the “vane” extends from the dia-
mond bud near the apex of the stupa, whose structure in totality rep-
resents the different levels of worldly existence reaching up to the at-
tainment of nibbana (nirvana).
The pagoda platform is approached by way of four stairways on
the north, east, south, and west sides. The southern stairway is con-
sidered the main entrance, flanked at its base by two enormous
chinthe (lions). All stairways except the western one (which was fit-
ted recently with an escalator) contain small shops selling a wide va-
riety of devotional items, such as flowers, beads, and sandalwood
Buddha images. Pilgrims make their way around the platform in a
clockwise direction.
The variety of buildings clustered around the stupa is overwhelm-
ing: shrines (planetary posts) for each of the eight days of the
Burmese week; small stupas ringing the main stupa; devotional halls
for each of the four Buddhas of the present era, located at the four
cardinal directions; the Naung Daw Gyi (Elder Brother) pagoda,
which is, according to legend, where the eight hairs of Gotama Bud-
dha were kept before being encased in the main stupa; a sacred
banyan tree; nat and weikza images and shrines; a reproduction of the
Maha Bodhi stupa in India; and the stone inscriptions of King Dham-
mazedi that relate the pagoda’s history. A distinctive feature of many
of the buildings located on or approaching the platform is the classi-
cal Burmese pyat-that or tiered roof structure, originally built of
wood, which makes a striking contrast with the immense solidity of
the main stupa. Despite chronic shortages of electricity in Rangoon
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SHWE DAGON PAGODA, POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF • 409

(Yangon), the Shwe Dagon Pagoda is usually illuminated at night, an

impressive site. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; SHWE
DAGON PAGODA; SHWE DAGON PAGODA, POLITICAL SIG-
NIFICANCE OF.

SHWE DAGON PAGODA, POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF.

Although primarily a religious site, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda has
functioned as a contested public space of great importance during
the colonial and postcolonial periods. It was occupied by British
troops during the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–1826, and
again in 1852 following the annexation of Rangoon (Yangon) and
Lower Burma during the Second Anglo-Burmese War. Because
of its strategic location, part of the pagoda platform, including the
western staircase, was occupied by British troops between 1852
and 1929. Although maintenance of the pagoda remained in
Burmese Buddhist hands and a Board of Trustees for this purpose
was established in 1885, the remains of British soldiers were
buried at the site (later removed), and part of the grounds was at
one time used as an ammunition dump. The British also attempted
to tunnel into the base of the pagoda. By the second decade of the
20th century, this continuing desecration, together with the unwill-
ingness of Western visitors to the pagoda (and other Buddhist
sites) to doff their shoes, had become political issues, taken up by
the Young Men’s Buddhist Association and the General Council
of Buddhist Associations (later the General Council of Burmese
Associations), which saw defense of the Buddhist religion as part
of their nationalist program.
Participants in the students’ strike against the act that established
Rangoon (Yangon) University gathered at the Shwe Dagon on De-
cember 3, 1920, and a monument at the southwest corner of the
pagoda platform commemorates this event. Subsequent student
strikes, in 1936 and 1938–1939, used the pagoda and its environs as
bases of operation, and it was an objective of a massive march un-
dertaken in support of the 1938 Oil Field Workers’ Strike. After
World War II, Bogyoke Aung San made political speeches from the
pagoda hill. On August 26, 1988, his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi
made a speech in the public grounds adjoining the pagoda, attended
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410 • SHWE KYIN, NAI

by huge crowds, which marked the beginning of her leadership of the

prodemocracy movement.
The military regime established on September 18, 1988, has
sought to “occupy” the pagoda both physically and ideologically. In
1999, the State Peace and Development Council sponsored large-
scale renovation, including replacement of the bejewelled hti (um-
brella) at its apex, which had been donated by King Mindon in 1871.
Official photographs show Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt and
other high SPDC officers at the apex of the pagoda, presiding over
installation of the new hti, images that advertise their spiritual wor-
thiness and high status.

SHWE KYIN, NAI (1913–2003). Also known as Nai Ba Lwin (nai is

a title for an adult male in the Mon language); Mon leader, founder,
and president of the New Mon State Party. Born near Moulmein
(Mawlamyine), he studied at Rangoon (Yangon) University and
served in the British navy. He was jailed by the Burmese govern-
ment for participating in the uprising of 1948, became a leader of
the Mon People’s Front after his release from jail, and established
the New Mon State Party in July 1958. Participating in various in-
surgent united fronts, he cooperated closely with the Karen Na-
tional Union and became vice chairman of the Democratic Al-
liance of Burma in 1988. However, Nai Shwe Kyin signed a
cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restoration Council in
June 1995. After signing the cease-fire, he resided at Moulmein un-
til his death in March 2003.

SHWE TAIK, SAO (1894–1962). Prominent Shan (Tai) leader and the
Union of Burma’s first president. Educated at the Shan Chiefs’ School
in Taunggyi, he served in the British army for 20 years and in 1927
was chosen as successor to his uncle as sawbwa of Yawnghwe by the
state’s council of ministers. After World War II, he initially opposed
the policy of Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government to merge
Burma Proper with the Frontier Areas in an independent Burma, but
compromises reached with Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
President Aung San at the Panglong Conference of February 1947
persuaded him to sign the agreement that concluded the historic con-
ference. He served as president of the Union of Burma from 1948 to
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SHWESANDAW PAGODA • 411

1952. From 1952 to 1960, he was speaker of the upper house of par-
liament, the Chamber of Nationalities. An advocate of reform and
modernization in the Shan States, he endorsed the formal relinquish-
ment of authority by the sawbwas to the Shan State government in
1959, but also played an important role in the Federal Movement.
When General Ne Win seized power and shut down parliamentary
government in March 1962, Sao Shwe Taik’s house in Rangoon (Yan-
gon) was surrounded by troops, and his youngest was son killed. He
died at Insein Jail under ambiguous circumstances in November 1962.
See also HEARN KHAM, SAO NANG.

SHWEBO. Located in Sagaing Division west of the Irrawaddy

(Ayeyarwady) River, a town with an estimated population of 68,654
in 1996. It is renowned as the hometown of King Alaungpaya,
founder of the Konbaung Dynasty, who briefly made it his royal
capital (Yadanatheinkha) and base for the conquest of Upper and
Lower Burma. Nearby are villages, Monhla and Chantha, where
Portuguese followers of Felipe de Brito were exiled after the con-
quest of Syriam (Thanlyin) by King Anaukpetlun in 1613. De-
scendants of these people, who retained their Catholic religion, are
known as Bayingyi. Shwebo was known as Moksobomyo, “town of
the hunter Po,” referring to Alaungpaya’s early career.

SHWEMAWDAW PAGODA. A major pagoda, located in Pegu

(Bago), which is said to contain hair and tooth relics of Gotama Bud-
dha. The stupa is 114 meters high and similar in bell-shaped design
to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, but taller. Legends trace its origins to
the lifetime of the Buddha. Its history goes back more than a thou-
sand years to early Mon kingdoms in the area, and it has always been
considered of special significance to the Mon people. In 1912 and
1917, it was damaged by earthquakes, and was completely de-
stroyed, with some loss of life, in an earthquake that occurred in May
1930. The Shwemawdaw was rebuilt in the early 1950s and is again
one of the principal Buddhist sites in Lower Burma. See also AR-
CHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; HTI.

SHWESANDAW PAGODA. A major pagoda, located on a hillside in

Prome (Pyay), said to contain hair relics of Gotama Buddha. It is
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412 • SHWEZIGON PAGODA

100 meters high, and, like the Shwe Dagon, Shwemawdaw, and
Kyaiktiyo pagodas, is a major site of Buddhist pilgrimage in Lower
Burma. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS.

SHWEZIGON PAGODA. One of the principal Buddhist monuments

of Pagan (Bagan), said to contain relics from the body of Gotama
Buddha. It was built during the reigns of Kings Anawrahta (r.
1044–1077) and Kyanzittha (r. 1084–1113). Its design anticipates
later Burmese pagodas, including the Shwe Dagon. Apart from Bud-
dhism, the Shwezigon is associated historically with veneration of
the Thirty-seven Nats, statues of whom are found near the pagoda
platform. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; PAGAN DY-
NASTY.

“SIDECARS” (SAIQ-KA). Three-wheeled, human-powered vehicles

(trishaws) that are still popular in Burma’s cities and towns, despite
the increasing use of secondhand cars, buses, and other motor vehi-
cles. Sidecars are made from sturdy bicycles, to which a third wheel
has been attached parallel to the rear wheel. Two seats, facing front
and back, are fitted between the rear wheels, and can accommodate
two or more persons, including children sitting in a passenger’s lap,
as well as baggage. The design is different from the well-known Viet-
namese cyclo, in which the two wheels and seats are fitted in front of
the driver. Cheap and convenient for people on short errands, the
owners rent them out to operators, who must pay them a fixed
amount of money before they have take-home pay.

SINGAPORE, RELATIONS WITH. After the State Law and Order

Restoration Council (SLORC) seized power in September 1988,
Singapore forged close economic and security ties with the new mil-
itary government. In late 1988, it became the first country to supply
the SLORC with arms, brought by ship to Rangoon (Yangon) in Oc-
tober of that year, and it remains one of the most important sources
of sophisticated weapon systems for the State Peace and Develop-
ment Council (SPDC). Singapore has served as a middleman in
arms purchasing deals between Burma and third countries, such as Is-
rael, and has provided “cyber-warfare” technology to Military Intel-
ligence. In the economic field, statistics show that Singapore is the
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SITTWE • 413

largest provider of foreign investment (US$1.49 billion by the late

1990s, though Chinese investment, for which the figures are undis-
closed, may be larger) and Burma’s second-largest trading partner.
The Singapore government has rebuffed international criticisms of its
support of the SPDC by claiming that engagement with Burma, in
both the economic and national security spheres, is a vital national in-
terest. See also MALAYSIA, RELATIONS WITH.

SINO-BURMESE. Persons of mixed Chinese and Burman (Bamar)

or Burmese parentage. Although the number of Chinese in Burma
was small compared to Indians during the British colonial period,
Sino-Burmese generally had an easier time assimilating into
Burmese society than Anglo-Burmese or Indo-Burmese, especially
if they adopted Burmese customs, language, and the Buddhist reli-
gion as practiced in the country. Chinese ancestry does not seem to
have been a barrier for many Sino-Burmese to become prominent,
the most famous example being Ne Win (Shu Maung). However,
such persons would generally hide, or downplay, their Chinese roots.
See also ANTI-CHINESE RIOTS.

SINYETHA PARTY. Known in English as the “Poor Man’s Party,” a

political group formed in 1936 by Dr. Ba Maw. Its capture of 16
seats in the 1936 legislative election enabled Ba Maw to form a mi-
nority government. After his government’s fall in February 1939, it
became an opposition party and in October joined with the Dobama
Asiayone and the All Burma Students Union in the Freedom Bloc.

SITTANG (SITTOUNG) RIVER. A major river system flowing from

the Pegu (Bago) Yoma to the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama) for a
length of about 500 kilometers. The Sittang Valley is home to a
densely populated agricultural region. A bridge across the Sittang
was the site of a major engagement between British and Japanese
forces in February 1942. See also IRRAWADDY (AYEYARWADY)
RIVER; SALWEEN (THANLWIN) RVER; WORLD WAR II IN
BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS).

SITTWE (SITTWAY). The capital of Arakan (Rakhine) State,

known as Akyab during the British colonial era, a Bengali name. Its
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414 • SITWUNDAN

population was estimated at 135,033 in 1996. Located at the mouth

of the Kaladan River, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal, it be-
came an important seaport and center for rice milling during the
British colonial period. Before World War II, commercial aircraft
flying into Rangoon (Yangon) from India and points west often
stopped off at Sittwe.

SITWUNDAN. Local militias or territorial armies, numbering about a

hundred, established with the encouragement of the government of
Prime Minister U Nu in 1948 to counterbalance the Burma Army’s
dependence on ethnic minorities, especially Karens (Kayins) and
Kachins. When the Karen National Union uprising began in Janu-
ary 1949, the sitwundan played a decisive role in defending Rangoon
(Yangon) from the rebels and quelling the “multicolored” communist
and ethnic nationalist insurgencies. Major General Ne Win, who be-
came head of the armed forces after the resignation of General Smith
Dun, commanded the sitwundan. See also KA KWE YE; TAT-
MADAW, HISTORY OF.

SLIM, GENERAL WILLIAM (1891–1970). One of the ablest gener-

als of World War II. He commanded Allied troops in Burma during
the Japanese invasion of December 1941–June 1942 and presided
over their retreat, largely intact, to northeastern India. He recognized
the importance of air support for ground operations and backed
Brigadier Orde Wingate’s Chindit operations in 1943–1944. Slim re-
pulsed the Japanese Imphal Campaign in March–June 1944 and, as
commander of the million-man-strong XIVth Army, retook Burma
from the Japanese in 1945. His use of deceptive tactics in the capture
of Meiktila and Mandalay in February–March was highly success-
ful, and the Allied offensive against the Japanese in central Burma
turned into a rout. During a meeting with Aung San in May 1945, he
gained the latter’s cooperation for joint operations against the re-
treating Japanese forces, although he also warned him that he and his
officers might be punished for collaborating with the Japanese. See
also MOUNTBATTEN, LORD LOUIS; PATRIOTIC BURMESE
FORCES; WORLD WAR II IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERA-
TIONS).
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SMITH DUN, GENERAL • 415

SLORC ANNOUNCEMENT NO. 1/90. Opposition parties, especially

the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in the
General Election of May 27, 1990, but the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) refused to allow formation of a gov-
ernment of elected Pyithu Hluttaw representatives. On July 27,
1990, it promulgated “Announcement No. 1/90,” which declared that
a transfer of power to civilian authorities could not take place until a
new constitution was drafted, and that the elected representatives
were responsible for doing so. It also declared that the junta, a mar-
tial law regime “not bound by any constitution,” had exclusive leg-
islative and judicial power and exercised administrative authority
with the assistance of lower-level governmental bodies. The junta
gave the National Convention, first convened in 1993, the responsi-
bility of drafting a new basic law. Signed by SLORC Secretary-1
Khin Nyunt, Announcement 1/90 expressed the SLORC’s determi-
nation to maintain complete control over the political transition
process. See also GANDHI HALL DECLARATION.

SMIM HTAW BUDDHAKETI (r. 1740–1747). Following an uprising

in Lower Burma against the Burman state at Ava (Inwa) in 1740,
Smim Htaw, a member of the Sangha, became ruler of a restored
Mon state at Hanthawaddy (modern-day Pegu [Bago]). His multi-
ethnic supporters included Burmans and Karens (Kayins), as well as
Mons. Attempting to capture Ava, he occupied Prome (Pyay) and
Toungoo (Taungoo), although an offensive north along the Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyardwady) River was repulsed. He gained a reputa-
tion for just and gentle rule, but was indecisive, and was overthrown
in a palace coup in 1747. The successor was his chief minister, Bin-
nya Dala (Bannya Dala). Mon nationalists regard Smim Htaw Bud-
dhaketi as one of their major historical figures.

SMITH DUN, GENERAL (1906–1979). A Karen (Kayin) officer who

fought on the British side in World War II and was appointed com-
mander of the Burma Army when independence was proclaimed in
January 1948. In January 1949, he was obliged to resign because of
the insurrection instigated by the Karen National Union; he was suc-
ceeded by Ne Win. Ne Win’s appointment marked the beginning of
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416 • SOCCER (FOOTBALL) IN BURMA

the systematic “Burmanization” of the Tatmadaw. Smith Dun’s ex-

periences are recounted in his biography, Memoirs of the Four-Foot
Colonel.

SOCCER (FOOTBALL) IN BURMA. Burma’s most popular sport,

soccer was introduced to the country during the British colonial pe-
riod, allegedly by James G. Scott, who claimed the Burmese had a
talent for it “because they like to fight.” In his famous essay “Shoot-
ing an Elephant,” George Orwell describes the tensions that
emerged during games played by European and Burmese teams. Dur-
ing the early Ne Win period, Burma had the strongest team in the
Southeast Asia region, winning the Asian Games soccer champi-
onship twice. Though the quality of the team later declined, its suc-
cesses against fellow members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations in recent years have stirred national pride.
Like Thingyan and popular music, soccer offers occasions for or-
dinary Burmese to blow off steam. A number of observers have re-
ported that in domestic matches, when a civilian team plays one
fielded by the Tatmadaw, there are often lusty cheers for the former
and boos for the latter. At present, it is estimated that Burma has
20,000 soccer players, organized into 600 clubs. See also SPORTS,
TRADITIONAL.

SOCIALIST PARTY OF BURMA (SPB). Established at the end of

World War II and led by Thakin Mya, its president, U Ba Swe, and
U Kyaw Nyein. It was the principal rival of the Communist Party
of Burma during the postwar independence struggle, and after inde-
pendence was the most powerful group inside the Anti-Fascist Peo-
ple’s Freedom League (AFPFL) united front. U Ba Swe and U
Kyaw Nyein served in the cabinets of Prime Minister U Nu, Ba Swe
also serving as prime minister in 1956–1957. The party also exer-
cised its influence through its affiliates, the All Burma Peasants’ Or-
ganization and the Trade Union Congress (Burma), the latter being
the largest trade union federation in the country during the 1950s.
Within the SPB, there was intense debate about what form socialism
should take, Marxism or a more moderate “Burmese” version. Left-
wing socialists (known as “Red Socialists”), favoring the former,
broke away from the party and the AFPFL and formed the Burma
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SPORTS, TRADITIONAL • 417

Workers and Peasants Party in 1950. When the AFPFL split in 1958,
the mainstream Socialists inside the League constituted the “Stable”
faction, a rival to Prime Minister U Nu’s “Clean” faction.

SOE, THAKIN (1905–1989). A prominent communist leader, member

of the Dobama Asiayone, and a founding member of the Commu-
nist Party of Burma (CPB) when it was established in August 1939.
During World War II, he served as secretary general of the CPB, but
he broke with the mainstream communists and established his own
party, the Communist Party–Red Flag, in February 1946. Until cap-
tured by government troops in 1970, he operated underground,
mostly in the Arakan (Rakhine) Yoma region. Granted amnesty by
the Ne Win regime in 1980, he played a peripheral role in the
prodemocracy movement of 1988, as a patron of the Unity and De-
velopment Party.

SOE WIN. Lieutenant general, commander of the Air Force, and First
Secretary (Secretary-1) of the State Peace and Development Coun-
cil (SPDC). Following the purge of Khin Nyunt in October 2004, he
was also appointed Burma’s prime minister. A graduate of the 12th
class of the Defence Services Academy, he rose to the position
of SPDC Secretary-2 in February 2003 as successor to Lieutenant-
General Tin Oo, who died in a helicopter crash in Karen (Kayin)
State on February 19, 2001. On August 25, 2003, he replaced Khin
Nyunt as Secretary-1. He is close to Senior General Than Shwe and
is a hard-liner, refusing to compromise with the democratic opposi-
tion. He reportedly ordered troops to fire on protesters during the
Rangoon General Hospital Incident in August 1988 and was also
partly responsible for the “Black Friday” Incident in May 2003.
See also STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL, IN-
TERNAL DYNAMICS.

SPORTS, TRADITIONAL. Although soccer (football) is Burma’s

most popular sport, traditional sports have a wide following. The aim
of chinlon, a game played with a cane or rattan ball (similar to takraw
in Thailand or sepak raga in Malaysia), is for players to keep the ball
in the air using only the feet or legs; a variant is played with a net, like
volleyball. Le-thwei is a form of kick-boxing similar to Thailand’s
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418 • SRI KSETRA

muay thai, though rougher and with more informal rules; the loser in
a match is the one who wipes blood from his face a certain number of
times. Le-thwei matches frequently occur at pwe, and national cham-
pionships are held at Aung San Stadium in Rangoon (Yangon). For
poor but tough young men, the sport promises a kind of upward mo-
bility, or at least winnings from matches to supplement meagre earn-
ings. A form of wrestling similar to Japanese sumo is found in Arakan
(Rakhine) State, and traditional regattas involving long boats with
many rowers are often held on Rangoon’s Kandawgyi Lake.

SRI KSETRA (THAYEKKHITTAYA). Capital of the Pyus from the

fifth to the ninth centuries CE, located at Hmawza near Prome
(Pyay) in what is now Pegu (Bago) Division. Chinese chroniclers
described it as a large city with a circular wall (8.5 miles in circum-
ference), 12 gates, and more than a hundred monasteries, where gold
and silver currency was used (coins were not minted by the Burmese
until the mid-19th century). It was a major seaport, being located at
that time near the sea. The Archeological Survey of India began ex-
cavations on the site in 1907. Today, the most prominent features of
the Sri Ksetra ruins are remains of the wall and several pagodas, in-
cluding the cylindrical-shaped Bawbawgyi and the conical Payagyi
and Payama, which have a design distinct from later pagodas, being
strongly influenced by India. G. E. Harvey describes Sri Ksetra as
“the most extensive site in Burma, larger than any city the Burmese
ever built, possibly because the whole population dwelt inside the
wall” (History of Burma, 1967, 12).

STATE. Pyi-ne (plural: pyi-ne-myar) in the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-

guage; refers to the major unit of territorial administration below the
national level (along with divisions) and above the district and
township levels. There are seven states: Arakan (Rakhine), Chin,
Kachin, Karen (Kayin), Kayah, Mon, and Shan. Under the Con-
stitution of 1947, the states, which generally corresponded to the ter-
ritory of the colonial-era Frontier Areas, had quasi-federal powers
and were recognized as the homelands of the major ethnic minorities.
However, the distinction between states and divisions (which also
number seven) became administratively and politically irrelevant af-
ter the Constitution of 1974 was adopted, and the new constitution
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STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL • 419

being drafted by the reconvened National Convention may weaken

their identity further by granting smaller ethnic groups, such as the
Was, “autonomous regions.” At present, each state is under the au-
thority of a “Peace and Development Council” composed of Tat-
madaw officers, under the command of the State Peace and Devel-
opment Council.

STATE COUNCIL. In the political system established by the Consti-

tution of 1974, one of the two major executive organs of the national
government, the second being the Council of Ministers. Composed of
the prime minister and 14 members chosen by the Pyithu Hluttaw
from among its members and another 14 chosen from state- and
division-level People’s Assemblies, its role was to “direct, supervise
and coordinate” the operations of central and regional/local govern-
ment organs. Chairman of the State Council was ex officio president
of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma and head of state: Ne
Win from 1974 to 1981, San Yu from 1981 to 1988, Sein Lwin
July–August 1988, and Dr. Maung Maung August–September 1988.

STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL (SLORC).

The martial law regime that seized power on September 18, 1988.
Reorganized as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
in November 1997, it is a junta consisting of the highest-ranking mil-
itary officers. According to SLORC Announcement No. 1/90, is-
sued in July 1990, it was not bound by any constitution and exercised
sole legislative, executive, and judicial authority (as does its succes-
sor the SPDC). The name in Burmese is Naing-ngandaw Nyein Wut
Pyi Pya Yae (shortened to Na-Wa-Ta), which literally means “Com-
mittee for the Construction of Tranquility and Obedience in the
Country.”
The SLORC was proclaimed over the state radio on the afternoon of
September 18. It ordered the armed forces to suppress popular opposi-
tion in Rangoon (Yangon) and other localities, resulting in as many as
1,000 civilian deaths in the capital alone. Its seizure of power is some-
times erroneously referred to as a “coup d’état” similar to the one on
March 2, 1962, which brought General Ne Win to power. But it was
neither an action by the military against a government of which it dis-
approved (SLORC commanders were loyal to retired leader Ne Win)
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420 • STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL

nor a putsch carried out by a single military faction against rivals (be-
cause the top levels of the Tatmadaw remained united behind the new
junta). Its legal, or extralegal, status appears to have been inspired by
the concept of “an aid to civil power,” found in the British colonial-era
code of laws, in which the military may be empowered to intervene “in
a state of extreme emergency” to protect lives and property. According
to some sources, Dr. Maung Maung, serving as president at the time,
advised SLORC chairman General Saw Maung about the use of this
legal justification on the eve of the takeover.
The mission of the SLORC was defined in four objectives: restora-
tion of law and order; facilitation of transportation and communica-
tions through adequate security; provision of the people with food
and other basic necessities; and successful staging of democratic,
multiparty elections after the three prior objectives have been met.
Although SLORC leaders repeatedly emphasized the transitional na-
ture of military rule and the need to establish a democratically elected
civilian government, reformulation of the junta’s objectives in the
more vague Three Main National Causes (“Non-Disintegration of
the Union,” “Non-Disintegration of National Solidarity,” and “Con-
solidation of Sovereignty”) in the early 1990s indicated that the tran-
sition process would be a lengthy one. Regime spokesmen defined
the SLORC’s role as historically analogous to that of the 1962 Rev-
olutionary Council, which over a dozen years prepared the way for
establishment of a new constitutional order, the Socialist Republic of
the Union of Burma.
On the state/division, township, and ward/village tract levels, Law
and Order Restoration Councils composed of lower-ranking military
officers were established to control the civil administration, in a pattern
similar to the post-1962 Security and Administration Committees.
At the time of its formation, the SLORC junta consisted of 19
members: Chairman General Saw Maung (later Senior General),
who served concurrently as commander in chief of the Tatmadaw,
prime minister, defense minister, and foreign minister; vice chairman
lieutenant general Than Shwe, concurrently commander of the
army; Secretary-1 Brigadier (later Lieutenant General) Khin Nyunt,
who was also head of Military Intelligence; Secretary-2 Colonel Tin
Oo; the commanders of the navy and air force; the adjutant-general;
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STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL • 421

the quartermaster general; the commanders of the Bureaus of Special

Operations 1 and 2; and the heads of the country’s nine regional mil-
itary commands (later expanded to 12). The most important change
in SLORC personnel was the retirement of Saw Maung as SLORC
chairman on April 23, 1992 and his replacement by Than Shwe.

STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (SPDC). Estab-

lished on November 15, 1997, the State Peace and Development
Council is the successor of the original post-1988 martial law regime,
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In
Burmese, its name is Naing-ngandaw Aye Chan Tar Yar Yae Hint
Phont Phyo Yae. The name change, emphasizing “peace” rather than
“order,” was probably motivated by the junta’s desire to improve its
image, but substantial changes in personnel also occurred.
The four top SLORC leaders, Chairman and Senior General Than
Shwe, Vice Chairman General Maung Aye, Secretary-1 Lieutenant
General Khin Nyunt, and Secretary-2 Lieutenant General Tin Oo,
retained their positions, but a Secretary-3, Lieutenant General Win
Myint, was added, along with newly appointed commanders for the
navy and air force and for six of Burma’s 12 regional military com-
mands. Altogether, the SPDC at its inception had 19 members.
The personnel changes infused new blood into the junta and
purged SLORC and cabinet members (the cabinet was also reshuf-
fled) who were considered excessively corrupt. Fourteen retired gen-
erals were appointed to a powerless “Advisory Board,” but this was
dissolved in June 1998.
In February 2001, Secretary-2 Tin Oo was killed in a helicopter
crash; in November, Secretary-3 Win Myint was dismissed on cor-
ruption charges. By early 2003, the junta had been reshaped into a
13-member body that included a new Secretary-2, Air Force Lieu-
tenant General Soe Win, who on orders of Than Shwe replaced Khin
Nyunt as Secretary-1 in August of that year. Khin Nyunt was ap-
pointed prime minister (one of Than Shwe’s posts), widely consid-
ered a demotion. In October 2004, Khin Nyunt was charged with cor-
ruption, arrested, and dismissed from his posts as prime minister and
director of Military Intelligence. See also STATE PEACE AND DE-
VELOPMENT COUNCIL, INTERNAL DYNAMICS.
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422 • STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Members of the State Peace and Development Council (as of Jan-

uary 1, 2005)
NAME AND RANK POSITION
1. Senior General THAN SHWE Chairman of SPDC;
SHWE Commander-in-Chief of
Defence Services (Tatmadaw)
2. Deputy Senior General Vice-Chairman of SPDC;
MAUNG AYE Deputy Commander-in-Chief
of Defence Services
(Tatmadaw); Commander-in-
Chief (Army)
3. General THURA SHWE Member of SPDC; Joint Chief
Mann of Staff of the Army, Navy
and Air Force
4. Lieutenant General SPDC Secretary 1; Air Defence
SOE WIN General
5. Lieutenant-General THEIN SPDC Secretary 2; Adjutant
SEIN General
6. Lieutenant-General THIHA SPDC Member; Quartermaster
THURA TIN AUNG General
MYINT OO
7. Lieutenant-General KYAW SPDC Member; Chief of Armed
WIN Forces Training
8. Lieutenant-General SPDC Member; Chief of
TIN AYE Military Ordnance
9. Lieutenant-General SPDC Member; Chief of
YE MYINT Bureau of Special
Operations-1 (covering
Kachin, Chin States,
Mandalay, Magwe, and
Sagaing Divisions)
10. Lietenant-General SPDC Member; Chief of
AUNG HTWE Bureau of Special
Operations-2 (Kayah, Shan
States)
11. Lieutenant-General KHIN SPDC Member; Chief of
MAUNG THAN Bureau of Special
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STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (SPDC), INTERNAL DYNAMICS • 423

Operations-3 (Pegu,
Rangoon, Irrawaddy
Divisions, Arakan State)
12. Lieutenant-General SPDC Member; Chief of
MAUNG BO Bureau of Special
Operations-4 (Karen, Mon
States, Tenasserim Division)

STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (SPDC), IN-

TERNAL DYNAMICS. Because of the secrecy of its operations and
tight state control of sensitive information, knowledge of the internal
political dynamics of the military SPDC junta is limited, though ru-
mors abound. Before the purge of Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt in
October 2004, he and SPDC Vice Chairman Maung Aye differed on
a number of important policy issues and had their own supporters
within the Tatmadaw; Khin Nyunt’s power base was within Mili-
tary Intelligence, while Maung Aye’s was within the ranks of the
regular army. The former supported limited economic opening to the
outside world, close relations with the People’s Republic of China,
and development of the border areas where minority nationality
armed groups have signed cease-fires with the central government.
Maung Aye was more conservative in economic policy, suspicious of
outside influences, and advocated a hard line toward the minorities.
Both opposed political liberalization, but while Maung Aye and his
supporters have advocated harsh treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi
and the National League for Democracy, Secretary-1 was believed
to have favored a more subtle and manipulative approach, to divide
the opposition. Few observers believed that differences between the
two leaders would result in a split in the Tatmadaw.
Traditional Burmese political culture tends to favor strong, per-
sonal leaders, such as Ne Win. The post–Ne Win era, under both the
SPDC and the previous State Law and Order Restoration Council,
has been a transition period in which “collegial dictatorship” has re-
sulted in policy paralysis and indecisiveness on such issues as eco-
nomic reform. At the beginning of the 21st century, SPDC Chairman
Senior General Than Shwe has emerged as Ne Win’s successor as
a “one man” leader, while Khin Nyunt has been purged and Maung
Aye has apparently lost power. Than Shwe’s worldview is deeply
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424 • STEVENSON, HENRY NOEL COCHRANE

conservative and isolationist, and it is unlikely that he would under-

take needed reforms of the political economy. Moreover, he is per-
sonally antagonistic to Daw Suu Kyi and may have had a hand in the
“Black Friday” Incident of May 30, 2003, which was instigated by
members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association
(USDA), of which he is the patron. In August 2003, Than Shwe re-
lieved the “moderate” Khin Nyunt of his post as SPDC Secretary-1,
appointing him prime minister. This was seen by most Burma watch-
ers as a demotion. Khin Nyunt’s arrest and dismissal as prime minis-
ter 14 months later confimed his waning power, rather than repre-
senting a sudden, fundamental change in SPDC factional dynamics.
With most of Khin Nyunt’s Military Intelligence subordinates
forcibly retired or arrested, it seemed that Than Shwe had further
consolidated his power, and that his most loyal subordinates, Prime
Minister Soe Win and General Thura Shwe Mann, are also in the
ascendant. With a single line of authority running from Than Shwe
through his subordinates to the rank and file below, the period of
SPDC transition and “collegial dictatorship” may be over.

STEVENSON, HENRY NOEL COCHRANE. British colonial offi-

cial who advocated establishment of a political/administrative unit
consisting of the peoples of the Frontier Areas separate from an in-
dependent Burma. At the beginning of World War II, Stevenson was
superintendent of the Chin Hills, and he organized and commanded
the Chin Levies to fight the Japanese. In 1943, he published The Eco-
nomics of the Central Chin Tribes. At war’s end, he was appointed di-
rector of the Frontier Areas Administration by the governor, Reginald
Dorman-Smith, and made his United Frontier Union proposal,
which, if adopted, would have created a jurisdiction within the
British Commonwealth for the “hill tribes.” Excoriated by the Anti-
Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) for promoting “divide
and rule,” his proposal was rejected by the Labour government of
Clement Attlee.
Although responsive to the demands of the AFPFL and Aung San,
the Attlee government was ignorant of or indifferent to the sentiments
of the ethnic minority peoples, though they had loyally supported
Britain during the war. Against a background of five-and-a-half
decades of ethnic insurgency and civil war, Stevenson’s repeated
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STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF • 425

warnings on the need for London to promote the economic and social
development of the Frontier Areas and to recognize their aspirations
was highly prescient. See also AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREE-
MENT; FRONTIER AREAS COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY; PANG-
LONG CONFERENCE.

STUDENT DEMONSTRATIONS (1996). The year 1996 witnessed

the largest student demonstrations in Rangoon (Yangon) since the
Democracy Summer of 1988. In October 1996, a fight between stu-
dents of Rangoon (Yangon) Institute of Technology and the auxil-
iary police resulted in arrests of the former. Although they were re-
leased, other students were detained for protesting against police
brutality; this inspired demonstrations in early December. In the
evening of December 6, some 1,000 students (with thousands of peo-
ple looking on) held a protest at Hledan Junction near Rangoon
(Yangon) University, demanding, among other things, reestablish-
ment of the students’ union. In the early morning of December 7, the
couple of hundred students remaining at the junction were attacked
by troops and Riot Police wielding fire hoses. The leaders were ar-
rested, but “hit-and-run” protests continued. The 1996 demonstra-
tions convinced the State Law and Order Restoration Council to
keep universities closed during most of the remainder of the 1990s
and to reorganize colleges and universities to prevent student ac-
tivism. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER; FOUR EIGHTS MOVE-
MENT; STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF; TEA SHOP INCI-
DENT; U THANT INCIDENT.

STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF. Beginning in the early 20th

century, university and high school students played an active and
sometimes leading role in struggles against British colonial rule. Fol-
lowing independence in 1948, they organized opposition movements
against the government in power, especially after Ne Win established
the Revolutionary Council in 1962. The first important student
movement, the boycott against the act that established Rangoon
(Yangon) University, began on December 3, 1920 (celebrated as
Burma’s National Day). By the mid-1930s, the Rangoon University
Students Union had become radicalized, and a second major student
strike took place in February 1936 when two of its leaders, Thakins
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426 • STUDENTS, HISTORICAL ROLE OF

Aung San and Nu, were expelled from the university by the British
authorities. Students also protested in December 1938 after some stu-
dents were arrested for assisting the Oil Field Workers’ Strike.
Most students respected Prime Minister U Nu, a highly educated
man. Despite the influence of the Communist Party of Burma on
campuses, his government generally treated student demonstrators
leniently. Under Ne Win, the government’s attitude changed com-
pletely, as reflected in the July 7, 1962 Incident, in which a large
number of students were shot dead by the Tatmadaw. Despite high
casualties inflicted by the authorities and the imprisonment of thou-
sands of students, their opposition persisted stubbornly throughout
the 1962–1988 period, when Ne Win was in power, including the
People’s Peace Committee demonstrations (1963), the Southeast
Asian Games demonstrations (1969), the U Thant Incident (1974),
protests demanding the release of imprisoned students (1975), the
movement commemorating the birth centenary of Thakin Kodaw
Hmaing (1976), and student protest over the demonetization order
of September 1987. The year 1988 saw the most massive expression
of student militancy in the history of independent Burma, beginning
with the demonstrations of March at the Rangoon (Yangon) Insti-
tute of Technology and Rangoon University and culminating in De-
mocracy Summer.
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council seized power
in September 1988, many student oppositionists went to the border ar-
eas to fight the new military regime, their most important organization
being the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front. Some activists,
such as Min Ko Naing, chose to work inside the country. By keeping
the campuses closed during much of the period between 1988 and
2001, offering an increasing number of courses through distance edu-
cation, intensifying Military Intelligence surveillance of students, and
moving universities outside Rangoon’s city center to remote locations,
the authorities largely succeeded in curtailing student activism, al-
though demonstrations broke out briefly in December 1996. See also
ALL BURMA FEDERATION OF STUDENTS UNIONS; ALL
BURMA STUDENTS UNION; AUNG GYAW, BO; DAGON UNI-
VERSITY; DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR A NEW SOCIETY; EDU-
CATION, HIGHER; MAUNG PHONE MAW; PEACE TALKS; TEA
SHOP INCIDENT; WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT.
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SUPAYALAT, QUEEN • 427

STUPA. A term generally synonymous with pagoda (zedi in the

Burmese [Myanmar] language), but referring especially to the
mound or spire surmounting a relic chamber containing objects asso-
ciated with the person of Gotama Buddha. The oldest is the Great
Stupa at Sanchi, India, built by the Emperor Ashoka in the third cen-
tury BCE. The Burmese form of stupa appears to be derived from
bell-shaped Sri Lankan designs. The exteriors of many of the most
important Burmese stupas, such as the 99-meter (326-foot)-high
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, are gilded. See also ARCHITECTURE,
RELIGIOUS; SHWEMAWDAW PAGODA; SHWESANDAW
PAGODA; SHWEZIGON PAGODA.

SULE PAGODA. When the colonial city of Rangoon (Yangon) was

constructed in a rectangular grid pattern by British engineers after the
Second Anglo-Burmese War, the Sule Pagoda was chosen as the
town center. Reputed to be over 2,000 years old, it is 46 meters high
and is believed to contain a hair relic of Gotama Buddha. Aside from
its location in the city center, surrounded by lively streets and shops,
the pagoda’s most striking feature is a large image of the Sule Nat, an
ogre (bilu) who converted to Buddhism, who points with his hand to-
ward the place where the Shwe Dagon Pagoda stands. The pagoda
is also known by its Mon name, Kyaik Athok. Since the colonial era,
the area around the Sule Pagoda and Rangoon City Hall has fre-
quently been the site of popular rallies and demonstrations. See also
DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

SUPAYALAT, QUEEN (1859?–1925). A secondary queen of King

Thibaw (r. 1878–1885) who quickly gained control over the last
monarch of the Konbaung Dynasty with the backing of a court fac-
tion and played a major role in the fatal decision of Thibaw’s gov-
ernment to take a hard line against the British. Ferociously jealous of
her weak husband, greedy, and cruel (though contemporary sources
may exaggerate), she was exiled with him to Ratnagiri, in India, fol-
lowing the Third Anglo-Burmese War. In the closing years of her
life, she was allowed to return to Rangoon (Yangon), where she
lived in near penury, largely ignored by a new generation of Burmese
patriots. F. Tennyson Jesse provides a vivid picture of her in The Lac-
quer Lady.
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428 • SUZUKI KEIJI, COLONEL

SUZUKI KEIJI, COLONEL (1894–1967). Japanese military officer

who, in the guise of a correspondent for the Yomiuri Shimbun news-
paper, “Minami Masuyo,” traveled to Burma in 1940 to collect intel-
ligence and make contacts with nationalists. His talks with Thakin
Kodaw Hmaing, Dr. Thein Maung, and Thakin Mya convinced him
that Japanese support of a well-organized Burmese uprising against
the British could serve Tokyo’s war aims, including shutting down
the Burma Road. When Thakins Aung San and Hla Myaing left
Burma for China in search of foreign support for the independence
movement, Suzuki arranged in November 1940 to have them brought
to Tokyo. Imperial General Headquarters made Suzuki head of the
Minami Kikan (Minami Organ), established on February 1, 1941.
He undertook the training of the Thirty Comrades at Hainan, China,
and made them the nucleus of the Burma Independence Army
(BIA), which was established soon after war broke out in December
1941. Assuming the Burmese name Bo Mogyo (Commander Thun-
derbolt), which had prophetic associations, he served as commander
of the BIA until June 1942, when he was transferred back to Japan.
Dr. Ba Maw compared him to Lawrence of Arabia, “an adventurer
with something like a sense of mission” (Breakthrough in Burma,
1968, 111). Most Burmese nationalists who worked with him be-
lieved his support for immediate Burmese independence was sincere.
U Nu quotes him as saying that if the Burmese really wanted inde-
pendence, they should take up arms, even against the Japanese. This
opinion was obviously not shared by the regular Japanese military,
who wanted to fully exploit Burma’s human and natural resources for
the war effort. See also JAPANESE OCCUPATION.

SYRIAM (THANLYIN). Now part of the Rangoon (Yangon) munici-

pal area, located across the Pegu (Bago) River from downtown Ran-
goon. It is a town of historical importance. In the early 17th century,
the Portuguese Felipe de Brito made it his personal appanage, until it
fell to King Anaukpetlun in 1613. During the eighteenth century,
there were competing British and French “factories” (trading depots)
at Syriam, but after its fall to King Alaungpaya in July 1756, Rangoon
became Burma’s principal port. Little remains of this colorful past,
save for some Portuguese ruins and an old Armenian church. During
the British colonial period, a large oil refinery was built at Syriam. It
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TAT • 429

was destroyed as part of the British “policy of denial” to the invading

Japanese in 1942, but was reconstructed after World War II. A Chi-
nese-built bridge spans the Pegu River between Rangoon and Syriam,
making it unnecessary to take a ferry between the two places.

–T–

TABINSHWEHTI, KING (r. 1531–1550). Second monarch of the

Toungoo (Taungoo) Dynasty, he restored the fortunes of the Bur-
mans (Bamars) by conquering the Mon state of Hanthawaddy
(modern day Pegu [Bago]) in Lower Burma in 1539, extinguishing
the line of monarchs established by Wareru, and extended his realm
to the south by occupying Martaban (Mottama), Moulmein
(Mawlamyine), and Tavoy (Dawei). To the north, he captured Prome
(Pyay) and campaigned in Upper Burma, where the Shans had oc-
cupied Ava (Inwa). Recognizing the equality of Mons and Burmans,
he established Hanthawaddy as his royal capital in 1546. He sought
unsuccessfully to subjugate Arakan and Siam (Thailand), and was
assassinated by Mon rebels in 1550. See also BAYINNAUNG.

TARONS (TARONGS). One of Burma’s smallest and most isolated

ethnic groups, who live near Hkakabo Razi in northern Kachin
State. Their existence was confirmed only in 1954, when they were
encountered by a Tatmadaw detachment carrying out a “flag march”
to the Burma–China border. They have been called the only Mon-
goloid “pygmy tribe” in existence, though their short stature may be
due to poor nutrition and inbreeding within the small population. In
1997, a group of Kachin Christians from Myitkyina visited the
Tarons and discovered that they had intermarried with neighboring
(Rawang) Kachins, and only a handful were “pure-blooded.”

TAT. “Army” in the Burmese (Myanmar) language. During the

early 20th century, the Young Men’s Buddhist Association advo-
cated the establishment of military training corps for young
Burmese men, but it was only in 1930 that the Ye Tat (People’s
Army) was established, under the auspices of the General Council
of Burmese Associations. It became extremely popular, especially
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430 • TATMADAW

in the countryside, although the British colonial government prohib-

ited its training with real weapons. The Ye Tat played an important
role in National Day and other celebrations and was much imitated,
especially by political parties and student activist groups. The
Dobama Asiayone established its own tat, as did the Rangoon Uni-
versity Students’ Union. Dr. Ba Maw’s Sinyetha Party had a para-
military unit called the Dahma Tat (dahma being a hewing knife used
by farmers), and U Saw organized the Galon Tat, which often at-
tacked the meetings of rival political groups and behaved like the
Blackshirts of Mussolini (whom U Saw admired). By 1939, the Ga-
lon Tat had reached a strength of around 100,000.

TATMADAW. The armed forces of the Union of Myanmar. Because

this Burmese term contains the honorific suffix “daw,” many persons
critical of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
regime prefer the generic term sit tat (“army”). But Tatmadaw re-
mains the most common term to describe the armed forces in the
Burmese (Myanmar) language, having been first used by its
founder, General Aung San.
The Tatmadaw comprises three services: the Army (Tatmadaw
Kyi), Navy (Tatmadaw Yay), and Air Force (Tatmadaw Lei). Of
the three, the Army is the most important in terms of political influ-
ence, number of personnel, and historical role in fighting both do-
mestic and foreign opponents of the central government. Since 1988,
all three services have undergone significant expansion in personnel
and equipment. In the late 1980s, the total number of Tatmadaw per-
sonnel was 186,000. By the end of the 20th century, this number ex-
ceeded 400,000, with the largest increase in the Army. Economic dif-
ficulties in the early 21st century seem to have precluded further
expansion to a stated goal of 500,000.
The Tatmadaw is under the authority of the Ministry of Defence,
which in 2005 was headed by Senior General Than Shwe, who
served concurrently as chairman of the SPDC and commander in
chief of the armed forces. The Ministry of Defence functions both as
a government department and as an integrated command headquar-
ters for the three services, and was located in the walled and heavily
guarded Defence Services Compound in downtown Rangoon (Yan-
gon) before being relocated to a new headquarters at Eight Mile
Junction, north of Inya Lake. In 2005, Tatmadaw and defense min-
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TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR) SOCIETY • 431

istry headquarters were transferred to the new national capital outside

of Pyinmana, in Mandalay Division. Since 1989, the commander in
chief of the Tatmadaw has been a senior (five-star) general, the com-
mander of the Army has been a full (four-star) general, and the com-
manders of the Navy and Air Force have been lieutenant (three-star)
generals. Burma is divided into 12 Regional Military Commands
(RMC), increased from nine during the 1990s. Each RMC com-
mander is an Army officer of major general (two-star) rank.
Unlike the armed forces in most Western countries, the Tatmadaw
plays primarily an internal security role. For example, Light In-
fantry Division 11, a rapid response force, was established to keep
order in Rangoon after the 1988 unrest. However, enhanced numbers
and new equipment also give it greater ability to project its power be-
yond its borders, especially in historically tense and complex rela-
tions with Thailand. See also ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA,
STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE
PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA; MYANMAR PO-
LICE FORCE; TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR) SO-
CIETY; TATMADAW, ECONOMIC ROLE; TATMADAW, HIS-
TORY OF.

TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR) SOCIETY. When

Bogyoke Aung San and his comrades established the Tatmadaw
during World War II, he described it as an armed force serving the
people and working in close collaboration with them. Two develop-
ments after independence in 1948, however, made its status as a
“people’s army” problematic. First, communist and ethnic minority
rebellions in 1948–1949 led to a “Burmanization” of the rank and
file, especially the officer corps, including the retirement of the
Karen (Kayin) commander in chief, General Smith Dun, and his re-
placement by Ne Win. The Tatmadaw’s Burman (Bamar) perspec-
tive was reflected in the harsh treatment meted out to populations in
Shan State during the 1950s, when the army launched attacks
against the Kuomintang (Guomindang) invaders. By the late 1960s,
most major ethnic minorities and many small ones had their own in-
surgent groups, and members of these communities regarded the Tat-
madaw as a foreign army of occupation.
Second, the monopolization of economic and political power by
the armed forces after Ne Win established the first martial law
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432 • TATMADAW, ECONOMIC ROLE OF

regime, the Revolutionary Council, in March 1962 led to the emer-

gence of the Tatmadaw as a privileged caste who were increasingly
separate in lifestyle and living standards from the civilian majority,
both in ethnic minority and Burman areas. Military officers, using
their privileged access to goods at subsidized prices, were able to en-
rich themselves in the black market, even though the Ne Win regime
(1962–1988) was, in principle, socialist and committed to ending the
“exploitation of man by man.”
After the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)
was established in September 1988, the alienation of the army from
Burmese society accelerated. During 1988’s Democracy Summer,
Tatmadaw-perpetrated massacres in Rangoon (Yangon), Sagaing,
and elsewhere made the army an object of hatred and fear among
Burmans, who, unlike the minorities, had previously held soldiers in
high esteem. Throughout the country, civilian populations were
forced by the army to engage in unpaid labor (forced labor), a prac-
tice that was not new in 1988 but was enforced with unprecedented
severity. After the abandonment of socialism in 1988, moreover, eco-
nomic liberalization policies have given high-ranking military offi-
cers new opportunities to make money and indulge in conspicuous
consumption, such as luxury homes, cars, and golf memberships,
while many ordinary Burmese, including lower-ranking soldiers, do
not have enough to eat.
The military has its own systems of schools, universities, hospitals,
and other social services, which are usually of better quality than
those available to civilians. Officers and men live in special areas on
the outskirts of major towns and cities, such as Mingaladon in north-
ern Rangoon, which resemble the “cantonments” of the British colo-
nial era, an ironic development for an army that prides itself on its an-
ticolonial past. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA.

TATMADAW, ECONOMIC ROLE OF. Both in terms of control of

economic enterprises and defense expenditures by the central gov-
ernment the Tatmadaw has played a dominant role in the economy
of Burma. After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in
March 1962, he ordered the nationalization of private firms, both for-
eign and domestic, in the name of the “Burmese Road to Social-
ism.” Some 15,000 enterprises, large and small, were brought under
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TATMADAW, HISTORY OF • 433

government ownership in 23 state corporations. Management of the

corporations became the responsibility of inexperienced and often
corrupt military officers. After the establishment of the State Law
and Order Restoration Council in 1988, the socialist economic sys-
tem was, in principle, abandoned, and the private sector, both do-
mestic and foreign, was given a greater economic role. But the Tat-
madaw has remained the largest economic player through ownership
and control of combines such as the Union of Myanmar Economic
Holdings, Ltd. (UMEH), established in 1990, and the Myanmar
Economic Corporation. These entities are involved in the majority of
joint ventures established with foreign companies. Other state-owned
enterprises fall under Tatmadaw control, and few civilian business-
people in Burma are able to survive without a close informal, if not
formal, relationship with high-ranking military officers.
Although statistics are unreliable, defense expenditure in the late
1990s was estimated to be between 30 and 40 percent of total gov-
ernment budgets, not counting “hidden” subsidies, such as free elec-
tric power for military units. This amounted to around 4 percent of
Burma’s Gross National Product. Generous budgets for the Tat-
madaw have resulted in serious neglect in other areas, especially
spending for education and health care, which are regarded by many
observers as being lower than during the 1962–1988 socialist period.
See also DEFENCE SERVICES INSTITUTE (DSI); ECONOMY
AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME
PARTY ERA; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, STATE
LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE PEACE
AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.

TATMADAW, HISTORY OF. Although the dynastic states of pre-

colonial Burma and British colonial Burma had their own armed
forces, the present Burmese armed forces, the Tatmadaw, date their
history to the establishment of the Burma Independence Army
(BIA) in December 1941. Its leadership consisted of Japanese offi-
cers, members of the Minami Kikan, and the Thirty Comrades, in-
cluding Aung San and Ne Win. After the Japanese drove the British
out of Burma and set up their own military administration, the BIA
was reorganized as the Burma Defence Army (BDA). Burma be-
came nominally independent in August 1943 within the Japanese
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434 • TATMADAW, HISTORY OF

“Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” and the BDA was re-
placed by the Burma National Army (BNA). Aung San, considered
by Burmese people to be the founder of the Tatmadaw, served as war
minister in the cabinet of Dr. Ba Maw, while Ne Win became the
BNA’s commander in chief.
After Aung San ordered the BNA to rise up against the Japanese on
March 27, 1945 (Resistance Day, known today as Armed Forces
Day), the British recognized it as the Patriotic Burmese Forces
(PBF). Following the Kandy Conference of September 1945, the
British established a new Burma Army, composed of BNA/PBF vet-
erans and the old colonial armed forces, which were composed of
ethnic minority troops who had remained loyal to them during the
war. This was a highly unstable arrangement. The largely Burman
(Bamar) PBF men regarded themselves as genuinely “patriotic sol-
diers” (myochit sittha in the Burmese [Myanmar] language) and the
ethnic minority rank and file as “rightists” and “mercenary soldiers”
(kyesar sittha) because they had fought on the side of the British.
However, the latter outnumbered the former (11 of 15 infantry bat-
talions were minority troops), and the commander in chief of the
postwar Burma Army was a Karen (Kayin), General Smith Dun.
During the communist and ethnic minority uprisings of
1948–1949, most ethnic minority officers and men mutinied or were
purged, leaving only a rump of the Burma Army loyal to the central
government: the ex-PBF forces, commanded by Ne Win. With the
support of local levies known as sitwundan, Ne Win succeeded in
rolling back the “multi-colored insurgents.” During the 1950s, the
Tatmadaw, now primarily a Burman armed force (especially on the
officer level), underwent substantial internal reorganization and ra-
tionalization, designed to make it a more efficient fighting force and
insulate it from both civilian oversight and political factionalism.
When the army-run Caretaker Government assumed power from
1958 to 1960, the Tatmadaw, described almost as a “state within the
state,” played an increasingly dominant economic and social, as well
as political, role in national life.
The two martial law regimes established in March 1962 and Sep-
tember 1988, the Revolutionary Council and the State Law and
Order Restoration Council, asserted a monopoly of military con-
trol over almost all aspects of society in central Burma. But al-
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TATTOOS AND TATTOOING • 435

though the Tatmadaw was a tough, effective fighting force during

the 1962–1988 period, battling communist and ethnic rebels in the
border areas; after 1988, it expanded into a rentier class, more con-
cerned with holding onto power and making money than with giv-
ing the nation and its diverse peoples a vision for the future. See
also TATMADAW; TATMADAW AND BURMESE (MYANMAR)
SOCIETY.

TATTOOS AND TATTOOING. Until recently, tattoos were widely

used in Southeast Asia for decoration of the body, and Burma was no
exception. Most rural Burman (Bamar) men had tattoos of a dark
bluish hue, usually extending from the waist to the knees, which re-
minded colonial-era British observers of a tightly fitting pair of
shorts. The designs were commonly of animals, nats, bilus (demons),
and stylized letters of the Burmese alphabet. Young men underwent
the ordeal of tattooing by a se saya (tattoo master), using natural pig-
ments (lampblack gave the bluish hue) and primitive but elaborately
decorated needles, to make themselves attractive to women and ex-
hibit their manly stoicism (men boasted of having large areas of skin
tattooed at one time in spite of the terrible pain). Additional tattoos
were often placed on the arms, chest, or back. Some designs had
magical as well as aesthetic appeal; along with other charms, they
were believed to make the bearer invulnerable to swords or bullets,
help in winning the affections of a young woman, or defend against
snake bite or black magic. Many of the peasant soldiers who joined
Saya San’s Rebellion in 1930 had special charms tattooed on their
bodies to protect them from British bullets. Burman women rarely
had tattoos, and never in visible places.
Some of Burma’s ethnic minorities, such as the Shans and the
Chins, have their own tattoo traditions. Shan men often had elaborate
decorations over their entire bodies, exceeding in complexity those of
the Burmans. Chin women had geometric decorations tattooed on
their faces. During the 20th century, the use of tattoos declined
widely throughout the country, a consequence of modernization. By
the 1990s, only a few old men could be seen with tattooed thighs. But
tattooing has not died out entirely among younger men, and health
experts warn that the use of infected needles is a significant cause of
the spread of AIDS.
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436 • TAUNGGYI

TAUNGGYI. The capital of Shan State, with a population of 108,231

persons when the last census was taken in 1983 and an estimated
134,023 people in 1996. It stands at an elevation of 1,430 meters
(4,690 feet) above sea level. Its multiethnic population includes not
only Burmans (Bamars) and Shans (Tai), but also Chinese and
people from India and Nepal, reflecting both historical connections
with China and the town’s British colonial past. Because of its health-
ful climate and strategic location at the entrance to the Shan States,
James G. Scott established it as the Shan States’ administrative cen-
ter in the early 20th century. It was the site of the Shan Chiefs’
School, which offered the rigors of a British public school education
to Shan royalty. Located near Inle Lake in the old Shan State of
Yawnghwe (Nyaungshwe), it has been an enterprising center of the
black market trade since the “Burmese Road to Socialism” was
imposed in 1962.

TAVOY (DAWEI). The capital of Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division,

Tavoy had a population estimated at 95,903 in 1996. A port city on
the Andaman Sea, it alternated between Burmese and Thai control
during the 18th and early 19th centuries before being occupied by the
British in 1826. The Yadana Pipeline runs nearby, and a new rail-
road between Tavoy and Ye attracted much attention internationally
during the 1990s because of the use of forced labor. The city and
surrounding areas are home to the Tavoyans, a people closely related
to the Burmans (Bamars).

TAVOYANS. An ethnic minority living in and around Tavoy (Dawei)

in Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division. Linguistically and culturally,
they are closely related to the Burmans (Bamars).

TAWNGPENG (TAUNGPENG). Located west of the old Shan State

of Hsenwi, Tawngpeng was described as a “Shan State,” though most
of its inhabitants were Palaung and it was ruled by a Palaung
sawbwa. Its capital, Namhsan, contained the ruler’s haw, which was
destroyed in World War II. With an area of 2,430 square kilometers
(938 square miles), Tawngpeng was rich because of the cultivation of
tea, enjoyed throughout Burma, and the Bawdwin silver mine in the
hills around Namhsan. See also MINERAL RESOURCES.
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TEAK • 437

TEA SHOP INCIDENT (MARCH 12, 1988). Against a backdrop of

economic distress, the tea shop incident, which occurred in northern
Rangoon (Yangon) on the evening of Saturday, March 12, 1988, was
the small spark that led to the massive demonstrations of Democracy
Summer and the end of the Burma Socialist Programme Party
regime. The most commonly accepted account is that a fight broke
out at the Sanda Win Teashop between students of nearby Rangoon
Institute of Technology (RIT, now Yangon Technological Institute)
and local youths over the choice of music to be played on the shop’s
cassette player. One of the students was injured by a local youth, who
was arrested but later released on bail because his father was chair-
man of the local People’s Council. On March 13, units of the Lon
Htein (Riot Police) attacked RIT students who were protesting this
abuse of power, and at least two students, including Maung Phone
Maw, were killed. See also WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT.

TEA SHOPS. Tea shops are an essential part of social life in Burma,
places for refreshment, conversation, and just passing the time. Busi-
ness is often conducted in these shops, and in a society where the
state-run mass media have little credibility, they are good places to
swap rumors or political opinions. For this reason, Military Intelli-
gence informers are frequent customers.
The tea is usually served with milk and sugar, though thin Chinese
tea is also provided free of charge. Tea shops also sell a wide variety
of tea snacks, usually Chinese- or Indian-style, along with other
items, such as cigarettes. Some tea shops are quite elaborate, but oth-
ers, especially in the villages, are little more than open-air stalls
equipped with small wooden tables and chairs. See also TEA SHOP
INCIDENT.

TEAK. Kyun in Burmese, historically Burma’s most important forest

resource. Teak (Tectonia grandis) is a deciduous tropical hardwood
that grows best in upland areas, often reaching tremendous height (50
meters) and girth (5 meters). Easily identified by their large leaves,
teak trees grow in mixed forests, where they comprise no more than
10 to 15 percent of all arboreal species. Durable and insect-resistant,
a tree can take as long as 150 years to reach maturity. Traditionally a
royal monopoly, teak was used for the construction of Buddhist
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438 • TENASSERIM (TANINTHARYI) DIVISION

monasteries, royal palaces, and substantial housing, as well as furni-

ture and elaborate wooden ornamentation, the latter being a well-
developed art in Burma. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the British
used it extensively for shipbuilding. After the Second Anglo-
Burmese War, they established a strict system of forest conservation
that delivered high yields without depleting forest reserves, making
teak an important colonial-era export. The system continued, with
some modifications, until the untrammeled commercialization of
forestry under the State Law and Order Restoration Council after
1988. Although Tectona grandis is found in Thailand, China, In-
donesia, and India, the world’s most extensive stands of teak, 70 per-
cent of the total, are found in Burma. Because of foreign exploitation
and the popularity of teak for use in furniture and flooring, however,
they are being rapidly depleted, especially along the Thai and Chi-
nese borders. See also ARCHITECTURE, RELIGIOUS; ARCHI-
TECTURE, TRADITIONAL; THIRD ANGLO-BURMESE WAR.

TENASSERIM (TANINTHARYI) DIVISION. One of Burma’s 14

states and divisions, it has an area of 43,346 square kilometers
(16,736 square miles) and an estimated population in 2000 of 1.35
million (1983 census figure: 917,247). The divisional capital is
Tavoy (Dawei). Tenasserim Division comprises three districts
(Tavoy, Mergui [Myeik], and Kawthaung) and 10 townships. It is
elongated in shape, extending from Mon State in the north to
Burma’s southernmost point at Kawthaung (formerly Victoria Point).
It forms a long border with Thailand on the east, defined geographi-
cally by the Tenasserim Yoma (mountain range). To the west, it fronts
the Andaman Sea and includes the Mergui (Myeik) Archipelago, an
abundant marine environment with tropical reefs and diverse sea life.
Ethnically, Burmans (Bamars) form the majority, while minorities
include Tayoyans, Karens (Kayins), Mons, and the Moken, or “Sea
Gypsies,” who live a nomadic existence in the Mergui Archipelago.
Tenasserim Division’s climate and environment are more closely
akin to those of Island Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) than
to continental Burma. It has abundant tropical fruits (coconuts, duri-
ans, mangosteens, and rambutans, among others) and is Burma’s
most important producer of betel nut. Fishing and fisheries are eco-
nomically important, including the breeding of prawns, which are
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THAI–BURMA RAILWAY • 439

exported to foreign countries. While Mogok (Mogoke) in Man-

dalay Division has its rubies, the Mergui Archipelago produces
high-quality pearls. Mining, especially for tin and tungsten, is eco-
nomically important, and the cultivation of rubber and palm oil is
being expanded.

THAGYA MIN. Also known as Sakka or Sakra, in Burmese popular re-

ligion he is the King of the Gods, sometimes identified as the king of
the nats, who corresponds to the Hindu god Indra. During Thingyan,
Thagya Min is said to descend to earth to judge human beings. He in-
scribes the names of good people in a book bound with gold and
those of sinners in a volume with covers of dog skin. He is also pro-
tector of the Buddhist religion, who received the hair of Gotama
Buddha in a golden bowl when the latter cut it off to become a her-
mit. Like the Greek god Zeus, he is often depicted as punishing
wrongdoers with thunderbolts.

THAI–BURMA RAILWAY. Railway built by the Japanese during

World War II, which connected the Bangkok–Singapore line at
Bangpong, Thailand, with the Ye–Moulmein (Yay, Mawlamyine)
line at Thanbyuzayat, in what is now Mon State. It was 415 kilome-
ters (257 miles) long, ran through Three Pagodas Pass, and made it
possible for the Japanese to have direct rail links between Singapore,
Malaya, Thailand, and Burma. At a time when shipping was increas-
ingly threatened by Allied submarines, the railway was a top strate-
gic priority and was completed in record time, between October 1942
and August 1943. Service began on October 25, 1943.
It is often called the “Railway of Death” because so many Allied
prisoners of war (POWs) and Asian slave laborers perished during its
construction. Of 61,806 POWs, 12,399 (over 20 percent) died of star-
vation, disease, and maltreatment. The number of Asian laborers,
known as romusha in Japanese, probably exceeded 300,000, of
whom as many as 100,000 may have died. POW and Japanese
sources agree that the romusha, who came from Burma, Thailand, In-
donesia (mostly Java), Malaya, and Vietnam, were treated even more
harshly than the POWs, and lacked any sort of medical care. On the
Burmese side of the border, laborers were forcibly recruited into the
Chwe Tat or “Sweat Army” of Dr. Ba Maw’s government.
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440 • THAILAND (SIAM) AND BURMA

The rail line was repeatedly attacked by Allied aircraft and fell into
disuse after the war. A popular novel about the railway, Pierre
Boulle’s Bridge on the River Kwai, contains a number of inaccura-
cies. During the 1990s, a new rail line constructed between Tavoy
(Dawei) and Ye by the State Law and Order Restoration Council,
which also used forced laborers, is often compared to the original
“Railway of Death.” See also FORCED LABOR; YE–TAVOY
RAILWAY.

THAILAND (SIAM) AND BURMA. By the 16th century, two pow-

erful states flourished in the valleys of the the Chao Phraya and Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Rivers, the Siamese Tai state of Ayuthaya
and the Toungoo Dynasty of the Burmans (Bamars), whose king,
Tabinshwehti (r. 1531–1550), established his capital at Han-
thawaddy (modern Pegu [Bago]) and unsuccessfully attempted to
conquer Siam in 1548. His successor, Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581),
subjugated Chiang Mai (now in northern Thailand) and accepted the
surrender of Ayuthaya in 1564; he began his campaign in 1563 after
the king of Siam refused to give him two sacred white elephants. Be-
cause of an uprising by the former Siamese king, Bayinnaung was
obliged to recapture it in 1569, sacking the Siamese capital and plac-
ing the country under the rule of a puppet king, Thammaraja. Tham-
maraja’s son, Phra Naret (Naresuan, who became king of Siam in
1590), successfully threw off the Burmese yoke in 1584 and fought a
series of defensive and offensive wars against Bayinnaung’s succes-
sor, Nanda Bayin (r. 1581–1599). In 1592, Phra Naret killed the
Burmese crown prince, Nanda Bayin’s son, in single combat on the
backs of elephants, an episode that made him one of Thailand’s most
revered national heroes. The Siamese asserted control over Tavoy
(Dawei) in what is now Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division in 1593.
Hostilities between the two states continued intermittently
throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1759–1760, Alaung-
paya (r. 1752–1760), founder of the Konbaung Dynasty, laid siege
to Ayuthaya, but he died during the campaign, and his son Hsin-
byushin (1763–1776) launched a new invasion in 1765. Three
Burmese columns entered Siam by way of Chiang Mai, Three Pago-
das Pass, and Tenasserim, capturing and pillaging the Siamese capi-
tal in April 1767. The Siamese king was killed, and Hsinbyushin’s
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THAILAND (SIAM) AND BURMA • 441

victorious armies brought thousands of prisoners of war back to Up-

per Burma.
The fall of Ayuthaya (it was never rebuilt) is considered one of
Thailand’s greatest national calamities. But a half-Chinese Siamese
general, Pya Taksin, led a successful resistance and established a new
dynasty at Thonburi, near modern Bangkok. He was overthrown in
1782 by another general, Maha Chakri, who moved the capital to
Bangkok and established the dynasty that reigns in Thailand today.
Maha Chakri (known as King Ramathibodi, or Rama I) defeated sev-
eral attempts by King Bodawpaya (r. 1781–1819) to conquer Siam,
though he was not able to recover Tenasserim, which remains part of
Burma today. Burma ceased to be a threat after the First Anglo-
Burmese War, and relations between Siam and British Burma were
peaceful. However, Japanese armies based in Thailand, formally
Japan’s ally, invaded Burma at the beginning of World War II.
A key element in Burma–Siam conflicts were the Mons, who pre-
viously ruled states in Lower Burma and sought Siamese help to
prevent their domination by Burman kings. When Alaungpaya extin-
guished Mon independence in the mid-18th century, many Mons fled
to Siam, where they attained high civil and military office under
Rama I and his successors.
In 1917, Siamese prince Damrong Rajanubhab published a history
of the centuries-long hostility between the two countries, Our Wars
with the Burmese (Thai Rop Phama), which had a major influence on
the development of Thailand’s view of its national history, as found
in school textbooks and popular culture. In his view, not only were
the Burmese a savage and aggressive people, but Siam was defeated
in war only when it was unprepared and divided against itself. Kings
who rallied the people, such as Phra Naret and Rama I, waged suc-
cessful wars of national liberation against an imperialist enemy.
More recent scholarship has cautioned against casting the history
of the 16th to 18th centuries in a 20th-century conceptual framework.
The 24 Thai–Burmese wars described by Damrong between 1539
and 1767 were wars between monarchs rather than nations, and many
prominent Siamese (including Phra Naret’s father) were willing to
accept Burmese overlordship. Premodern Burma and Siam shared
similar ideological preconceptions, derived from their common Indo-
Buddhist civilization. One of these was that the ruler was not the
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442 • THAILAND, RELATIONS WITH

leader of a national community, but a man endowed with abundant

hpoun (power/authority) that legitimized his wartime victories over
peoples near and far.
Images of Burma as the “enemy nation” are still strong in Thai-
land. Popular Thai motion pictures such as Suryothai and Ban Rajaan
have revived them. But relations between the Thai government and
the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) are generally
cordial, strengthened by complementary economic interests.
In Burma, images of the Thais have not, until recently, been espe-
cially negative. After King Hsinbyushin’s armies brought back
Siamese musicians and dancers from the sack of Ayuthaya, the
Burmese gained an appreciation for their refined Yodaya (Ayuthaya)
styles, which deeply influenced their own theater, music, and the arts.
Yodaya became synonymous with elite or courtly art forms. How-
ever, the post-1988 military regime has encouraged anti-Thai senti-
ment from time to time, symbolized by its construction of a statue of
Bayinnaung at Tachilek in Shan State, a town overlooking the Thai
border, and its periodic campaigns against the “perfidious Siamese”
in the state-run mass media. See also THAILAND, RELATIONS
WITH.

THAILAND, RELATIONS WITH. Sharing both a common Indo-

Buddhist civilization and many centuries of antagonism, the govern-
ments of Burma and Thailand followed fundamentally different
courses after World War II. Under both U Nu and Ne Win, Burmese
policies emphasized socialism and nonalignment (as well as isola-
tionism after Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council was established in
1962), while Thailand’s leaders promoted friendly relations with the
United States, close economic connections with Western countries
and Japan, and an anticommunist agenda, as reflected in Bangkok’s
charter membership in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in 1954
and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967
and its active support for the American war in Indochina, including
sending troops to South Vietnam. Thai leaders, most of whom had
conservative military backgrounds, were suspicious of socialism in
any form and also feared the power of the Communist Party of
Burma. They used border-area insurgent movements, especially the
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THAILAND, RELATIONS WITH • 443

Karen National Union (KNU) and the New Mon State Party
(NMSP), as “buffers” against the Burmese. These insurgent groups
carried out trade across the border, especially at Three Pagodas Pass,
exporting Burmese raw materials, including teak, in exchange for
consumer goods from Thailand that supplied Burma’s black market.
Ethnic minority armies in Shan State, such as the Mong Tai Army
exported opium and heroin to international markets through Thai-
land, but although the trade earned corrupt Thai officials large payoffs,
it had relatively little impact on Thailand’s own society.
Guided by Washington’s Cold War strategies, Thailand’s behavior
earned the distrust of the Burmese in other ways, especially when it
became apparent that Bangkok and Washington backed the Kuom-
intang (Guomindang) incursions into Shan State in the early 1950s.
Relations reached an all-time low when Thailand offered sanctuary to
former Prime Minister U Nu’s Parliamentary Democracy Party
(PDP) in 1969; in 1970, the PDP became part of a united front, the
National United Liberation Front, which sought unsuccessfully to
overthrow the Ne Win regime.
In the late 1980s, Thailand’s prime minister, Chatichai Choonha-
van, talked about “replacing battlefields with marketplaces” in
post–Cold War Mainland Southeast Asia. Burma–Thailand relations
underwent a fundamental transformation in 1988, following the es-
tablishment of the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) and the end of Burmese-style socialism. In December of
that year, the Thai Army commander, Chaovalit Yongchaiyuth, led a
delegation to Rangoon (Yangon) to talk with SLORC chairman
General Saw Maung. The new Burmese military regime was des-
perate for cash, and the Chaovalit–Saw Maung summit led to the
SLORC’s awarding concessions to Thai companies to exploit forest
resources along the border; these earned the regime over US$110
million annually between 1989 and 1993. The SLORC also granted
Thai companies offshore fishing contracts. The Yadana Pipeline
Project, the largest single foreign investment project in Burma, was
built in the 1990s to supply Thailand with natural gas extracted from
the Gulf of Martaban (Mottama).
Closer cooperation between the Thai military and the Tatmadaw
after 1988 put an end to the ethnic minority insurgents’ buffer status.
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444 • THAILAND, RELATIONS WITH

They lost the freedom to operate on Thai soil, while Tatmadaw units
were sometimes allowed to attack KNU units from the Thai side of
the border. In 1990, Burmese troops occupied Three Pagodas Pass,
formerly controlled by the KNU and the NMSP; in 1995, they cap-
tured the major KNU base at Manerplaw.
Although economic engagement and closer relations brought mon-
etary rewards to Thai elites, the country has suffered from the conse-
quences of Burmese social and political instability. Hundreds of
thousands of Karen (Kayin), Mon, Karenni, and Shan (Tai)
refugees, as well as Burman (Bamar) student exiles, fled to Thai-
land in the wake of the SLORC power seizure and Tatmadaw “Four
Cuts” campaigns. Most of these refugees lacked documentation, and
many became illegal workers inside Thailand. Powerful new drug-
dealing armies in Shan State, especially the United Wa State Army
(UWSA), flooded the country with cheap amphetamines, creating a
major drug epidemic nationwide that especially targeted young peo-
ple. Growth of Chinese influence has also worried Thai leaders, and
the flow of cheap Chinese consumer goods into Burma has disap-
pointed businesspeople who had hoped the country would become
part of a Thailand-centered economic zone.
Along the long, poorly demarcated Thai–Burma border, an unpre-
dictable mix of the Thai Army and Border Police, Tatmadaw troops,
cease-fire armed groups (such as the UWSA), and non-cease-fire
groups (such as the KNU and the Shan State Army-South) has led
to periodic outbursts of armed conflict. One of the worst incidents oc-
curred in February 2001, when Thai and Tatmadaw artillery units ex-
changed fire across the border at Mae Sai-Tachilek, an event that
stimulated a paroxysm of anti-Thai propaganda in Burma’s state-run
mass media, including glorification of the 16th-century conqueror-
king Bayinnaung, who subjugated Siam in the 1560s.
On the Thai side, old images of the Burmese as the “enemy nation”
have revived in popular films such as Ban Rajaan (about a band of vil-
lagers who, Alamo-like, fought to the death against an 18th-century
Burmese onslaught) and Suryothai (about a legendary queen who died
fighting the Burmese invader from the back of an elephant).
But Thai attitudes toward Burma since 1988 have been complex.
As Thailand moved from military domination of politics to govern-
ment by elected civilian politicians, many “civil society” activists ex-
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THALUN, KING • 445

pressed strong sympathy for their prodemocracy counterparts in

Burma and also helped Burmese refugees. The Thai media, including
the English-language Nation and Bangkok Post, have provided de-
tailed reports on violations of human rights inside Burma and along
the border. The Democrat Party government of Prime Minister Chuan
Leekpai was one of the few within the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations to express reservations about admitting Burma as an ASEAN
member in 1997. Under Chuan’s successor, Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, business interests have had a dominant voice in the mak-
ing of Burma policy, meaning that other factors have not been al-
lowed to interfere with smooth bilateral relations. See also THAI-
LAND (SIAM) AND BURMA.

THAKETA. A new town in Rangoon (Yangon), established during

the Caretaker Government period of General Ne Win
(1958–1960). It is located to the northeast of downtown Rangoon,
across the Pazundaung/Ngamoeyeik Creek. To deal with the prob-
lems of squatters and overcrowding in the city center, Rangoon’s new
mayor, a military officer, relocated as many as 170,000 squatters by
mid-1959, of whom 55,050 were brought to Thaketa. During De-
mocracy Summer in 1988, the township was the site of intense
antigovernment resistance. See also OKKALAPA, NORTH AND
SOUTH.

THAKIN. Meaning “master” in the Burmese (Myanmar) language,

the term was used by Burmese during the colonial era to address
British people, roughly equivalent to sahib in India (thakinma was
used to address a woman). The Dobama Asiayone appropriated the
term to refer to members of their own party, asserting that the
Burmese rather than the British were the true masters of the country
(thus, the Dobama Asiayone was widely known as the “Thakin
Party,” and its members as “Thakins”). As a title, it is presently used
to refer to individuals who were members of the party or who ac-
tively participated in the struggle for independence, for example,
Thakin Aung San or Thakin Nu. See also BO.

THALUN, KING (r. 1629–1648). Monarch of the Toungoo Dynasty,

who came to the throne after the assassination of his brother,
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446 • THAMANYA SAYADAW

Anaukpetlun. He is best remembered for moving the capital of his

kingdom from Pegu (Bago) to Ava (Inwa) in Upper Burma. This
was a momentous decision, because it isolated the royal capital from
foreign contact and deprived the state of that cultural and economic
stimulation that made Ayuthaya, capital of Siam, one of Southeast
Asia’s major cities. Although Pegu’s port was of doubtful use because
of silting, there was some thought of establishing a new capital at Syr-
iam (Thanlyin), across the Pegu (Bago) River from present-day Ran-
goon (Yangon). In contrast to his predecessors, Thalun’s reign was
largely peaceful. He promoted administrative reform, the composing
of the first law code (Dhammathat) in the Burmese (Myanmar) lan-
guage, expansion of the irrigation facilities at Kyaukse, and a detailed
land survey, carried out in 1638.

THAMANYA SAYADAW (1910–2003). The Baddantha Vinaya

Sayadaw, a highly respected member of the Sangha, known as the
“Thamanya Sayadaw” because he established a monastery on
Thamanya Hill, 40 kilometers southeast of Pa-an (Hpa-an), the cap-
ital of Karen (Kayin) State. A community of around 7,000 families
grew up around the monastery, where the sayadaw promoted welfare
projects and a “zone of peace,” free of the strife afflicting adjacent ar-
eas. Of Pa-O ethnicity, he was widely believed to have possessed a
spiritual status approaching Buddhahood. Unlike most other senior
monks, he refused to accept the patronage of the State Peace and
Development Council, but received Aung San Suu Kyi at his
monastery twice, in October 1995 and June 2002, following her re-
lease from house arrest. He passed away at the age of 93 on Novem-
ber 29, 2003, while being brought back to Thamanya from a hospital
in Rangoon (Yangon).

THAN SHWE (1933– ). Senior general, chairman of the State Peace

and Development Council (SPDC), and concurrently commander in
chief of the Defence Services, minister of defence, and minister of
agriculture. He also served as prime minister until this post was given
to SPDC Secretary-1 Khin Nyunt in August 2003. Born in 1933 in
Kyaukse, near Mandalay, he entered the military in 1953, complet-
ing the course at the Officers’ Training School (ninth), serving in the
Psychological Warfare Department before assuming commands in
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THANAKHA • 447

Shan and Karen (Kayin) States that assured him rapid promotion.
Appointed commander of the Southwest Military Region in 1983, he
attained the rank of lieutenant general four years later. He was ap-
pointed vice chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) when it was established on September 18, 1988,
and also served as commander in chief of the Army. He succeeded
Senior General Saw Maung as SLORC chairman on April 23, 1992,
and remained in the same post when the SLORC was reorganized as
the State Peace and Development Council in November 1997.
Regarded by outsiders in the 1990s as an aging, neutral figure, who
delayed retirement in order to stem rivalries between Khin Nyunt and
Maung Aye, Than Shwe has often been underestimated. Observers
now see him as the successor to Ne Win as the country’s unitary
“strong man,” though he lacks the deceased leader’s prestige and his-
torical role in the independence movement. Than Shwe is a highly
conservative figure, apparently willing to sacrifice Burma’s post-
1988 open-door policies to preserve the military-dominated status
quo. Lacking personal charisma, he is a reclusive leader, preferring to
exercise his power ambiguously and from behind the scenes. See also
STATE PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL, INTERNAL
DYNAMICS.

THAN TUN, THAKIN (1911–1968). A prominent nationalist and

communist leader. He was a member of the Dobama Asiayone and a
founding member of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) when
it was established in August 1939. Although he served as agriculture
and transport minister in the wartime government of Dr. Ba Maw, he
played a central role in organizing anti-Japanese resistance, along
with his brother-in-law, war minister Aung San. Than Tun served as
general secretary of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League
from May to August 1946, when the CPB was expelled from the
League. In March 1948, he led the mainstream CPB underground and
two years later was chosen to be the party’s chairman, a post he held
until he was assassinated by his bodyguard in the Pegu (Bago) Yoma
on September 24, 1968.

THANAKHA. A tree (Linoria acidissima) whose bark is ground and

mixed with water to make a traditional cosmetic for women. Applied
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448 • THANT, U

to the face and arms as a yellowish paste, it serves as a skin moisturizer

and sunscreen. Mothers use it to protect their children’s skin. Though
Burmese women who can afford them increasingly use Western-style
cosmetics, thanakha remains very popular because it is cheap and ef-
fective. Readily available in markets, there are several grades, and it can
be purchased in solid, powder, or liquid form.

THANT, U (1909–1974). Serving as secretary general of the United

Nations, U Thant was arguably the best-known Burmese on the in-
ternational stage until Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1991. A close associate of U Nu, he served as minister of infor-
mation in his cabinet from 1948 to 1953 and became the prime min-
ister’s secretary from 1954 to 1957. In the latter year, he was ap-
pointed Burma’s ambassador to the United Nations, where he was
secretary general from 1961 to 1971. Following his death in Novem-
ber 1974, his remains were taken back to Rangoon (Yangon). Presi-
dent Ne Win’s refusal to give U Thant the honor of a state funeral
(because of his closeness to U Nu, who had led the Parliamentary
Democracy Party insurgency on the Thai–Burma border until 1973)
aroused major antigovernment demonstrations, the U Thant Inci-
dent of December 1974.

THATON. A town in Mon State north of Moulmein (Mawlamyine),

the site of a thriving trade center and Mon kingdom in Lower
Burma that was captured by King Anawrahta in 1057. The king,
Manuha, was brought by Anawrahta back to Pagan (Bagan). Little
remains of its former glory, except for the ruins of city walls. See also
MANUHA TEMPLE.

THEIN PE MYINT, THAKIN (1914–1978). A leading left-wing

politician. During World War II, he resided in India, where he coor-
dinated anti-Japanese resistance inside Burma with the backing of the
British. Although elected secretary general of the Communist Party
of Burma in 1945, he did not follow the CPB mainstream when it
went underground in March 1948. Active in legal left-wing parties, in
1956 he became a member of parliament representing the National
Unity Front. After 1962, he advised the Revolutionary Council of
General Ne Win and became a member of the Burma Socialist Pro-
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THINGYAN • 449

gramme Party. He is also well known for his short stories, novels,
and political memoirs.

THIBAW, KING (r. 1878–1885). Last monarch of the Konbaung Dy-

nasty, he was chosen by court factions to succeed his father, Mindon
(r. 1853–1878), because the 19-year-old youth was considered pli-
able. He soon fell under the influence of his secondary queen, Su-
payalat, who, with the aid of a powerful minister, the Taingda
Mingyi, arranged a massacre of royal relatives in early 1879 that
made the king, probably undeservedly, notorious. This was done to
eliminate rivals for the throne, a time-honored practice. A weak ruler
who never took advantage of his royal prerogative (multiple wives),
he feared plots by surviving royal princes and never left Mandalay
Palace. Although some historical details are unclear, his ministers
apparently sought an alliance with France, including provision of
arms, to counteract British influence, thinking that Britain’s involve-
ment in Afghanistan (where the British resident had been assassi-
nated in 1879) would prevent them from taking a strong hand in Up-
per Burma. But British economic and imperial interests in India and
Lower Burma converged to create a climate for war, which began on
November 14, 1885, following Thibaw’s refusal of an ultimatum that
demanded British control over Burmese foreign policy. When Man-
dalay was captured on November 28, Thibaw and Supayalat were ex-
iled to Ratnagiri, India, where the king died in 1916. The sad specta-
cle of the royal couple being brought in a lowly bullock cart to a
steamer on the banks of the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, while
thousands of their subjects mourned their banishment, marked a de-
cisive end to Burma’s old order. See also ANGLO-BURMESE WAR,
THIRD.

THINGYAN. The Burmese New Year, a three- to four-day period that

falls during the first half of April, the hottest time of year. It is believed
that during this time, Thagya Min, King of the Gods, visits earth to
check up on humans’ behavior. Practitioners of astrology determine
the exact time of his arrival and departure. Thingyan is also known as
the Water Festival because people douse each other with water, in-
cluding strangers walking along the street. Water pistols (traditionally
made of bamboo), pails, and even fire hoses are used to get people
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450 • THIRTY COMRADES

thoroughly wet. Apart from members of the Sangha, high-status peo-

ple are not spared, though their subordinates pour water on them re-
spectfully. The streets of towns and villages all over Burma are packed
with lively crowds, and the celebrations are often raucous. Neighbor-
hoods, companies, and government departments sponsor special curb-
side stages, called pandals, where performances are given, including
Western-style rock concerts.
In recent years, economic hardship and political restrictions have
made Thingyan a rare opportunity to publicly let off stream. Because
the behavior of the crowds is sometimes unpredictable, the State
Peace and Development Council authorities warn them to conduct
the festivities in a “dignified” manner. See also CALENDAR,
BURMESE.

THIRTY COMRADES. The group of Burmese nationalists recruited

by Aung San after he returned to Burma from Japan in February
1941, who formed the core of the Burma Independence Army
(BIA). Secretly brought out of Burma in batches between March and
July 1941, the men were trained by Japanese officers of the Minami
Kikan during April–October on the island of Hainan, China. After
the outbreak of war, they were moved to Bangkok and became offi-
cers of the BIA, formally established on December 28, 1941. During
their training on Hainan, they were divided into three groups: the
first, including Aung San (whom the Japanese recognized as the most
talented of the Thirty Comrades), were to assume top command and
administrative positions in the new army; a second group, including
Ne Win, were to carry out guerrilla and sabotage actions behind
British lines; and the third group, composed of younger men, were to
assume field command positions. They assumed Burmese noms de
guerre emphasizing their courage and prowess (e.g., Thakin Shu
Maung was Bo Ne Win, “Commander Bright as the Sun”).
Ranging in age from 19 to 35 (the average age was 24), more
than half of the Thirty Comrades were members of the left-leaning
Thakin Kodaw Hmaing faction of the Dobama Asiayone; a mi-
nority, including Ne Win and Tun Oke, came from the Dobama’s Ba
Sein faction, which was rightist. Ne Win alone achieved a dominant
position in postwar Burma, as commander of the armed forces in
1949 and head of the Revolutionary Council in March 1962. Some
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THREE MAIN NATIONAL CAUSES • 451

of the Thirty Comrades, such as Bo Let Ya and Bohmu Aung, took

high office in Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League govern-
ments; others, such as Bo Yan Aung and Bo Zeya, became promi-
nent leaders of the Communist Party of Burma. In the 1990s, a
handful of surviving Thirty Comrades called for reconciliation be-
tween the State Law and Order Restoration Council/State Peace
and Development Council and Aung San’s daughter, Aung San
Suu Kyi.

THIRTY-SEVEN NATS. Also known as the “Thirty-Seven Lords,”

the pantheon of nats first established by King Anawrahta in the
11th century. To 36 deities, whose number has cosmological mean-
ing, the monarch decreed that Thagya Min, the divine protector of
Buddhism, be added, making 37. Although membership in the pan-
theon has changed over time, the number has remained constant.
They include Min Mahagiri and his sister, Lady Golden Face; the
Little Lady, a cheerful nat who plays with children; the Old Man of
the Banyan Tree, who died of leprosy; and a king of Chiang Mai
(now in Thailand) who was taken prisoner by Bayinnaung. All but
three (including Thagya Min) were executed, died under other
tragic or violent circumstances, or perished from disease. Their el-
evation to special status reflected the need to placate them, to pre-
vent their angry spirits from doing harm to the living. See also
MOUNT POPA; NAT PWE.

THREE MAIN NATIONAL CAUSES. The self-defined mission of the

State Law and Order Restoration Council martial law regime and its
successor, the State Peace and Development Council. The three
causes are “Non-Disintegration of the Union,” “Non-Disintegration of
National Sovereignty,” and “Consolidation of National Sovereignty.”
The underlying assumption is that military rule in some form is es-
sential for preserving national unity and defending the country’s in-
dependence from foreign interference. The Three Main National
Causes appear on the front pages of practically all government-
approved publications, often accompanied by sets of four “political,”
“economic,” and “social objectives,” and the “People’s Desire,” for
example, to “crush all internal and external destructive elements as
the common enemy.”
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452 • THREE PAGODAS PASS

THREE PAGODAS PASS. Known as Payathonzu in the Burmese

(Myanmar) language, Three Pagodas Pass is a historically impor-
tant trade and invasion route that links Burma’s Karen (Kayin)
State and Thailand’s border town of Sangklaburi. Before 1988 the
settlement at Three Pagodas Pass, controlled by the Karen Na-
tional Union (KNU) and the New Mon State Party (MNSP), was
a profitable “toll gate,” where taxes were levied by the insurgents
on cross-border and black market trade, including the export of
teak from Burma. However, on July 23, 1988, disputes between
the KNU and the NMSP over revenues erupted into full-scale
fighting, with casualties on both sides. Although a truce between
the two groups was negotiated, the Tatmadaw seized control of
Three Pagodas Pass in early 1990 and now operates a trading post
and sawmills there. See also MAE SOT-MYAWADDY; THAI-
LAND (SIAM) AND BURMA.

THURA SHWE MANN (ca. 1947– ). General, close to Senior Gen-

eral Than Shwe, who is joint chief of staff of the Army, Navy, and
Air Force and the third-ranking member of the State Peace and De-
velopment Council. A member of the 11th class of the Defence Ser-
vices Academy, he is considered a likely successor to Than Shwe
and General Maung Aye in the highest positions in the junta.

THURIYA (THE SUN). One of the most important Burmese (Myan-

mar) language newspapers during the British colonial period, estab-
lished by U Ba Pe in 1911. In 1935, it was purchased by U Saw, who
used it to promote his own political agenda. Thuriya’s inflammatory
articles in 1938 played a major role in sparking rioting against Indi-
ans and Muslims in Rangoon (Yangon), during which almost 200
people were killed. See also ANTI-INDIAN RIOTS.

TIN OO, “MI” (1928–1997). Powerful head of Military Intelligence

(thus “MI”), State Council member, and joint secretary of the
Burma Socialist Programme Party, he was considered Ne Win’s
heir apparent until arrested and given a life sentence in 1983 for cor-
rupt practices. His sudden fall was attributable in part to his unpopu-
larity with regular Tatmadaw commanders, who feared the informa-
tion he obtained as MI head might be used to blackmail them, but
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TIN U, “NLD” • 453

more fundamentally to Ne Win’s concern that he was becoming too

powerful. His power base of loyal supporters within the intelligence
apparatus was largely independent of Ne Win’s control. Tin Oo re-
mained in prison, most of the time at Insein Jail, until the 1990s,
when he was released, apparently viewed by the State Law and
Restoration Council as harmless. His successor as head of Military
Intelligence was Khin Nyunt. See also RANGOON INCIDENT.

TIN OO, SECRETARY-2 (1940–2001). Lieutenant general and sec-

ond secretary of the State Law and Order Restoration Council
and, after 1997, the State Peace and Development Council. A hard-
liner who repeatedly called for the “annihilation” of Aung San Suu
Kyi and the National League for Democracy, he was the target of
an assassination attempt in March 1997, a parcel bomb that killed his
eldest daughter. The government claimed that it had been sent by
Burmese exiles based in Japan. On February 19, 2001, he died in an
apparently accidental helicopter crash in Karen (Kayin) State.

TIN PE, BRIGADIER. A close confidant of General Ne Win and vet-

eran of the Fourth Burma Rifles, he served in the cabinet during the
Caretaker Government period (1958–1960) and was member of the
Revolutionary Council when it was established in March 1962. A
leading theorist of the “Burmese Road to Socialism,” his influence
over economic policy following the resignation of the pragmatic
Brigadier Aung Gyi from the Council in 1963 was paramount. But
Tin Pe’s doctrinaire, Eastern European–type socialist ideas caused
economic disaster, and he was obliged to resign from the Revolu-
tionary Council in 1968. Thereafter, economic policy was largely for-
mulated by the civilian economist U Ba Nyein. See also ECONOMY
AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SOCIALIST PROGRAMME
PARTY ERA.

TIN U, “NLD” (1927– ). Chairman of the National League for De-

mocracy (NLD) and a prominent opposition leader, Tin U served as
Tatmadaw chief of staff and defense minister from 1974 to 1976. He
was dismissed in March 1976 on charges of dealing in the black mar-
ket and given a seven-year jail sentence in January 1977 for failing
to report the coup d’état attempt (July 1976) against Ne Win, of
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454 • TIPITAKA

which he allegedly had prior knowledge. Observers believe that Ne

Win purged him on trumped up charges because he was becoming
too popular in the army and among civilians. Tin U had urged re-
straint in handling the demonstrations arising from the December
1974 U Thant Incident, and many younger officers, including the
coup plotters, were loyal to him (they were later purged or passed
over for promotion in favor of Ne Win loyalists).
Released during a general amnesty in 1980, Tin U devoted himself
to studying Buddhism and law and was prominent during the
protests of 1988. In September 1988, he joined with Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi and Aung Gyi in a coalition that became the National
League for Democracy after the September 18 seizure of power by
the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Following Aung
Gyi’s departure from the NLD in December 1988, he became the
party’s chairman. In July 1989, he was placed under one-year house
arrest, then given a prison sentence with hard labor. After his release,
Tin U worked closely with Aung San Suu Kyi to revive the NLD,
which was an object of sustained repression, and he was again placed
in detention following the Black Friday Incident of May 30, 2003.
As of late 2003, the state of his health and conditions of imprison-
ment remained uncertain. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER; IN-
SEIN JAIL; TRADE MINISTRY INCIDENT.

TIPITAKA (TRIPITAKA). The scriptures of Buddhism, known as

the “Three Baskets”: the Sutta Pitaka or Discourses of Gotama Bud-
dha; the Vinaya Pitaka, rules for the Sangha; and the Abhidhamma
Pitaka, a lengthy and difficult treatment of Buddhist philosophy and
psychology. The Tipitaka is in Pali, the sacred language of Theravada
Buddhism. Both King Mindon and Prime Minister U Nu convened
special assemblies of Buddhist monks and other scholars to correct
errors in the translation and transmission of the scriptures. See also
GREAT BUDDHIST COUNCIL, FIFTH; GREAT BUDDHIST
COUNCIL, SIXTH.

TOUNGOO (TAUNGOO). A town near the Sittang (Sittoung) River

in northern Pegu (Bago) Division, the site of a powerful Burman
(Bamar) kingdom in the 14th to 15th centuries whose rulers estab-
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TOUNGOO (TAUNGOO) DYNASTY • 455

lished the Toungoo Dynasty. It is located on major north-south high-

way and rail arteries linking Mandalay with Rangoon (Yangon).

TOUNGOO (TAUNGOO) DYNASTY (1486–1752). Sometimes

called the “Second Burmese (Myanmar) Empire” because, like the
Pagan (Bagan) and Konbaung Dynasties, it unified the country.
Historians generally divide it into two periods. The first, spanning the
reigns of Minkyinyo (r. 1486–1531), Tabinshwehti (r. 1531–1550),
Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581), and Nanda Bayin (r. 1581–1599), wit-
nessed the Burman (Bamar) conquest of the Mons in Lower
Burma and the Shans, who had occupied Ava (Inwa) in 1527, and
the kingdom emerged as a major power in Mainland Southeast Asia,
conquering Siam in the 1560s.
Monarchs of the Toungoo Dynasty Year of Accession
Minkyinyo 1486
Tabinshwehti 1531
Bayinnaung 1551
Nandabayin 1581
interregnum 1599–1605
Anaukpetlun 1605
Minredeippa 1628
Thalun 1629
Pindale 1648
Pye 1661
Narawara 1672
Minrekyawdin 1673
Sane 1698
Taninganwe 1714
Mahadammayaza Dipati 1733 (to 1752)
Source: D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia

The second period, coming on the heels of an invasion of Lower

Burma by Siam and Arakan and a chaotic interregnum
(1599–1605), is commonly called the Restored Toungoo Dynasty or
the Nyaungyan Dynasty. King Anaukpetlun (r. 1605–1628) reestab-
lished order, with his capital at Pegu (Bago), but his brother Thalun
(r. 1629–1648) moved the capital back to Ava (Inwa). This was a
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456 • TOURISM IN BURMA

significant development because Pegu had been one of Southeast

Asia’s major seaports (though it suffered from silting), while Ava
was located inland, in Upper Burma, isolated from the outside
world. The capital remained in Upper Burma until 1885, and narrow
ethnocentrism characterized Burmese rulers’ views of the world,
with the exception of King Mindon. Thalun’s successors were inef-
fective, and the country suffered greatly from Chinese invasions in
the mid-seventeenth century. The dynasty fell when Binnya Dala
captured Ava in 1752. See also ALAUNGPAYA; BRITO, FELIPE
DE; SYRIAM.

TOURISM IN BURMA. The beginnings of modern tourism in Burma

can perhaps be traced to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869,
which dramatically cut seaborne travel time between Europe and
Asia, or to the opening of the Strand Hotel on the waterfront of Ran-
goon (Yangon) in 1901, providing the colonial capital with its first
international class hotel. After World War I, steamships remained the
most important means of getting to Burma from Europe, but Ran-
goon was also linked with Europe and South Asia by air, principally
by British carrier Imperial Airways, and the Strand had several com-
petitors. The unwillingness of Western tourists to take off their shoes
and stockings upon entering the compounds of pagodas, the “Shoe
Question,” became a major political controversy following World
War I. Travelers wanted to see the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda up
close, but their qualms about going shoeless were interpreted by
Burmese activists as disrespect to the Buddhist religion. World War
II and insurgency following Burma’s achievement of independence
from British colonial rule in 1948 hampered development of the
tourism sector, but before Ne Win established the Revolutionary
Council in March 1962, Rangoon was well-equipped with tourism
facilities compared with many other Asian capitals, including one of
the region’s more modern airports in Mingaladon Township.
The Ne Win regime (1962–1988) adopted a policy of isolationism,
which included the banning of foreign tourists (travelers could only
lay over in Rangoon for 24 hours), although seven-day visas were in-
troduced in 1970 to generate foreign exchange. Facilities, including
the now-decrepit Strand Hotel, were minimal, and travelers found the
dual currency system (use of U.S. dollars in some places and kyats in
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TOWNSHIP • 457

others) confusing and inconvenient. But Union of Burma Airways,

the national carrier, took the more intrepid foreign tourists to Inle
Lake in Shan State, Mandalay, and Pagan (Bagan), places that re-
main the top three tourist destinations outside of Rangoon in the early
21st century. From Mandalay, tourists customarily have visited
nearby sites, such as the old royal capitals Ava (Inwa), Amarapura,
and Sagaing, and the colonial-era hill station Maymyo (Pyin Oo
Lwin).
After 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council made
development of the tourism sector a top priority, hoping to emulate
neighboring Thailand, where tourism generates billions of U.S. dol-
lars in revenue annually. Tourist visas were extended from 7 to 28
days. But the SLORC faced opposition from Aung San Suu Kyi and
her international supporters, who urged foreigners not to visit be-
cause tourism dollars allegedly helped keep the military regime in
power. In preparation for “Visit Myanmar Year” in 1996–1997, new
luxury hotels were constructed in Rangoon, Mandalay, and else-
where; private airlines were set up as joint ventures with foreign
companies; and tourist sites were upgraded (including the moat
around Mandalay Palace, which was allegedly renovated using
forced labor). The impact of tourism on the environment has been
controversial; a 60-meter concrete tower was opened at Pagan in
2005 for the benefit of tourists who wanted a view of the plain, dot-
ted with pagodas and temples, but the structure has been criticized for
being too large and poorly designed. Formerly inaccessible parts of
the country, such as the Mergui (Myeik) Archipelago, have been
opened for tourism exploitation, but this has often had negative im-
pacts on local people, such as the Mokens (“Sea Gypsies”), who live
among the islands. Because of poor infrastructure and the continuing
international boycott movement, it is unlikely that Burma will rival
Thailand as a tourism destination in the near future, but its hospitable
people and historic, often beautiful landscapes promise travelers a
taste of an “unspoiled” Asia. See also AIR TRANSPORT, CIVIL; IN-
VESTMENT, FOREIGN; “JUMPING CAT MONASTERY”; LAC-
QUERWARE; SEX INDUSTRY IN BURMA.

TOWNSHIP. A unit of local administration established by the British dur-

ing the colonial period. It was also part of the four-level administrative
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458 • TRADE MINISTRY INCIDENT

structure defined by the Constitution of 1974: the national level, the

state/division level, the township level, and the ward/village tract level.
Under the State Peace and Development Council, the district,
composed of four or five townships, has been reintroduced as an ad-
ministrative unit. Although district Peace and Development Councils
are frequently headed by a Tatmadaw officer of lieutenant-colonel
rank, township Peace and Development Councils are often headed by
military veterans, while the township government head is a local res-
ident appointed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Burma presently is
divided into 324 townships, which are further subdivided into wards
or village tracts. See also ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA,
BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD; ADMINISTRATION OF BURMA,
STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL/STATE
PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ERA.

TRADE MINISTRY INCIDENT (SEPTEMBER 17, 1988). After

troops fired on demonstrators from the roof of the Trade Ministry on
Strand Road in downtown Rangoon (Yangon), an angry crowd
surged into the building, intent on killing them. They were dissuaded
from doing so by opposition leaders Aung Gyi and U Tin U, but the
crowd took away the soldiers’ weapons. Military Intelligence direc-
tor Khin Nyunt later cited the incident as an example of how Burma
was slipping into anarchy, attempting to justify the power seizure by
the State Law and Order Restoration Council on September 18,
1988. See also DEMOCRACY SUMMER.

TRANSPORT. See AIR TRANSPORT, CIVIL; RAIL TRANSPORT;

ROAD TRANSPORT; WATER TRANSPORT.

–U–

U THANT INCIDENT (1974). After former UN Secretary-General U

Thant died in November 1974, President Ne Win denied him a for-
mal state funeral, ordering that his body be buried at the Rangoon
(Yangon) city cemetery at Kyandaw. U Thant was a close associate
of U Nu, the former prime minister who led an antiregime movement
based in Thailand between 1969 and 1973. Ne Win also apparently
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UNION SOLIDARITY AND DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION • 459

begrudged U Thant the international stature he enjoyed. Thousands

of people came to the Kyaikkasan grounds in Rangoon to pay re-
spects to his remains, and on December 5, 1974, university students
took possession of his coffin, bringing it to the Main Campus of Ran-
goon (Yangon) University. It was housed in the Convocation Hall,
where tens of thousands came to pay respects and Buddhist monks
offered chants.
Negotiations between the government and students might have
prevented a confrontation. Ne Win conceded that U Thant’s remains
could be buried in a cemetery park near the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.
But militant students took control of the situation, constructing a
mausoleum for the late secretary-general on the site of the demol-
ished Rangoon University Students’ Union building. It became the
focus for intense antiregime protest, including speeches critical of Ne
Win. Threatened by what seemed to be a popular as well as student
uprising, Ne Win ordered the Tatmadaw to storm the campus in the
early morning of December 11. They seized the coffin, which was
buried at the site near the Shwe Dagon, and killed an undetermined
number of students. Many other students were arrested. Demonstra-
tions and riots broke out around the city, and the authorities report-
edly killed hundreds of protesters. The U Thant incident was the
largest example of student militancy since the July 7, 1962 incident.
In many ways, it was a precursor of Democracy Summer and the
protests in early 1988 that led up to it. See also LABOR STRIKES.

UNION OF MYANMAR ECONOMIC HOLDINGS, LTD

(UMEH). Established in 1990, a military-owned business conglom-
erate with enterprises in numerous sectors, including trade, financial
services, tourism, and real estate. Believed to be the largest single
company in Burma, it has formed joint ventures with foreign compa-
nies. Its assets are owned by both the Ministry of Defence and Tat-
madaw units, personnel, and army veterans. See also DEFENCE
SERVICES INSTITUTE.

UNION SOLIDARITY AND DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

(USDA). Burma’s largest and most important mass movement organ-
ization, established in September 1993 by the State Law and Order
Restoration Council with Senior General Than Shwe as its patron.
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460 • UNITED FRONTIER UNION

It is not a political party but a “social organization,” registered with

the Ministry of Home and Religious Affairs. At the beginning of the
21st century, its membership numbers between 10 and 15 million. The
USDA is administered through a hierarchy of offices on the central,
state/division, district, township, and ward/village tract levels.
The USDA’s purpose is to organize support for the military
regime’s policies on the grassroots level. For a nominal fee (five ky-
ats), individuals can join and have access to free courses on practical
and ideologically oriented subjects, including computer training,
English, and “Buddhist culture.” Membership may also make it eas-
ier for persons to enjoy favorable treatment at the hands of govern-
ment or military officials, including employment, while those who
refuse to join may be harassed.
However, members are expected to make considerable contribu-
tions in terms of time and labor, including attendance at rallies.
USDA mass rallies have frequently been organized to criticize Aung
San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. The USDA
is considered responsible for a mob attack on her and other NLD
leaders in Rangoon (Yangon) in late 1996 and the “Black Friday”
Incident of May 30, 2003. It has considerable economic resources at
its disposal through ownership of land and enterprises and can estab-
lish joint ventures with foreign partners.

UNITED FRONTIER UNION (UFU). A post–World War II proposal

made by H. N. C. Stevenson, director of the Frontier Areas Adminis-
tration, to establish a province under British rule, including the Frontier
Areas but excluding most of Burma Proper. Based on the belief that
the ethnic minority peoples, who had been loyal to Britain during the
war, did not want to live in a Burman (Bamar)-dominated state, the
UFU would have joined together what are now Chin State, Kachin
State, the Shan and Karenni States, Karen (Kayin)-inhabited parts of
Toungoo (Taungoo) District and the Salween District, and what are now
Mon State and Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division. Stevenson organ-
ized the March 1946 Panglong Conference (known as the First Pang-
long Conference) to introduce the idea to Frontier Area leaders, but it
aroused the implacable opposition of Burmese nationalists, who ac-
cused him of following a colonial “divide and rule” policy. Although
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UNITED NATIONALITIES LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY • 461

Stevenson lobbied for the United Frontier Union in London, the pro-
posal was rejected by the Labour government of Clement Attlee, which
promised Aung San that Britain would adhere to the principle that
Burma Proper and the Frontier Areas would form a single independent
state. See also AUNG SAN–ATTLEE AGREEMENT; PANGLONG
CONFERENCE.

UNITED FRONTS (ANTIGOVERNMENT INSURGENTS). Eth-

nic nationalist, leftist, and Burman (Bamar) insurgent groups have
established united fronts to topple the central government since in-
dependence, but their effectiveness has been undermined by geo-
graphic remoteness, ideological and factional differences, and the
often-effective tactics of the Ne Win and State Law and Order
Restoration Council/State Peace and Development Council
regimes to divide them against themselves. The most important were
the National United Liberation Front (NULF), which brought to-
gether the Parliamentary Democracy Party (PDP) of former
Prime Minister U Nu, the Karen National Union (KNU), the New
Mon State Party (NMSP), and the Chin Democracy Party in 1970.
After its collapse, ethnic minority leaders established a new group-
ing in 1976, the National Democratic Front (NDF), which in addi-
tion to the KNU and MNSP also included the Kachin Indepen-
dence Army/Organization, the Karenni National Progress Party,
the Chin National Front, and seven other armed groups. In princi-
ple, it remained operative in 2005, although overshadowed by the
Democratic Alliance of Burma, established in November 1988,
which includes a broad array of minority, Burman, and political ex-
ile groups. See also CEASE-FIRES.

UNITED NATIONALITIES LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY

(UNLD). An umbrella organization of minority nationality political
parties established in 1989. Its 19 constituent parties, including the
Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the Arakan League
for Democracy, and the Mon National Democratic Front, won about
50 seats in the May 27, 1990 General Election. Between June 29
and July 2, 1990, the UNLD held a conference in Rangoon (Yangon)
and adopted a program based on federalism. On August 19, 1990, the
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462 • UNITED NATIONS IN BURMA

UNLD and the National League for Democracy formed an alliance,

but in 1992 the State Law and Order Restoration Council banned
the UNLD, although it has operated in exile as the United Nationali-
ties League for Democracy-Liberated Areas.

UNITED NATIONS IN BURMA. Burma joined the United Nations in

1948, after becoming an independent nation. U Thant, a prominent po-
litical figure close to Prime Minister U Nu, served as UN secretary-
general from 1961 to 1971, the first Asian to hold this post. A number
of other Burmese nationals have served in the United Nations in vari-
ous capacities, including Aung San Suu Kyi. After the State Law and
Order Restoration Council was established in September 1988, the
United Nations became involved in issues concerning human rights,
refugees, human development, and drugs. UN agencies with a pres-
ence in the country include the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), the International Drug Control Program (UNIDCP), the UN
Population Fund (UNFPA), the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Labour Organization
(ILO), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
In 1992, the UN Commission on Human Rights nominated a “spe-
cial rapporteur” to investigate the human rights situation in Burma,
encourage the government to make improvements, and make a report
to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission. In
2003, this post was filled by Dr. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian
academic and legal scholar. In addition, UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan designated a “special envoy,” Razali Ismail, a Malaysian
diplomat, who traveled many times to Burma to promote reconcilia-
tion between the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
and Daw Suu Kyi. The SPDC has also entered into intensive interac-
tions with the ILO over the issue of forced labor.

UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH. American ties with Burma

go back to before the First Anglo-Burmese War. Adoniram Jud-
son, a Baptist preacher, arrived in the country in 1815 and was fol-
lowed by other American Baptist missionaries, who made many con-
verts among the Karens (Kayins), Chins, and Kachins. During
World War II, American troops fought alongside Chin, Kachin,
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UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH • 463

Naga, British, and Chinese troops in northern Burma; Merrill’s Ma-

rauders fought bloody battles in 1944 to capture Myitkyina and its
airfield from the Japanese.
Before Burma became formally independent, the government
signed an educational exchange agreement with Washington under
the Fulbright Program in late 1947, and the United States began pro-
viding the country with foreign aid in 1950. But relations were trou-
bled by Washington’s support for Kuomintang (Guomindang)
forces operating in Shan State, and Prime Minister U Nu ended the
aid agreement over this issue in 1953. Aid was resumed in 1956, but
following the loss of two Burmese air force planes in 1961 after they
had intercepted a cargo plane from Taiwan bringing American sup-
plies to the Kuomintang, there was a new crisis in relations, and anti-
U.S. demonstrations flared up in Rangoon (Yangon). U Nu’s gov-
ernment regarded backing for the Kuomintang intruders by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a deliberate attack on Burma’s
sovereignty and independence.
After Ne Win established the Revolutionary Council in March
1962, relations with the United States and other Western countries were
reduced. Although ongoing American aid agreements continued until
their expiry, the Fulbright Program was shut down, and the activities of
private organizations, such as the Ford and Asia Foundations, ended.
However, the United States continued to give low-profile military as-
sistance, a total of US$80 million between 1958 and 1970, which in-
cluded the training of Tatmadaw officers at U.S. facilities. Modest
educational and cultural exchanges were also reestablished after
1970. By the mid-1970s, Washington was providing assistance for
drug-eradication programs, including helicopters and other equip-
ment, to interdict the export of opium and heroin across Burma’s
borders. According to some American critics, the U.S. government
also made available defoliants, similar to “Agent Orange,” to destroy
poppy fields inside Burma, but the Ne Win regime used them indis-
criminately against civilian ethnic minority populations. By the
1980s, the United States had become an important provider of eco-
nomic aid, though the amounts were small compared to those given
by Japan and West Germany.
Democracy Summer and the seizure of power by the State Law
and Order Restoration Council in 1988 led to a fundamental change
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464 • UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH

in relations. Much of the Tatmadaw’s violence against civilian demon-

strators took place near the U.S. embassy on Merchant Street in down-
town Rangoon, and Ambassador Burton Levin was outspoken in crit-
icizing the new regime’s hard line. Aung San Suu Kyi soon gained
admirers among influential Americans, including Ambassador Levin
and Stephen Solarz, a U.S. congressman with a special interest in
Asian affairs. American aid, a total of US$16 million, was suspended.
Aside from humanitarian aid, it has not been resumed.
The administrations of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton
both urged the post-1988 military regime to respect the results of the
General Election of May 27, 1990. President Clinton’s secretary of
state, Madeleine Albright, visited Daw Suu Kyi in Rangoon after her
release from house arrest in July 1995 and took a strong personal in-
terest in her situation. The U.S. State Department, in its annual Coun-
try Reports on Human Rights Practices, criticized the junta’s human
rights violations, though the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
had a different perspective, advocating better ties with the SLORC to
carry out drug eradication more effectively. A community of
prodemocracy Burmese exiles and activists emerged in Washington,
D.C., after 1988 and received substantial moral and material support
from the U.S. government, including the strong backing of an influen-
tial Republican Senator, Mitch McConnell of Missouri. Government-
funded Radio Free Asia broadcasts news in the Burmese (Myanmar)
language to provide Burmese listeners with an alternative to the offi-
cial mass media.
After 1988, the United States blocked financial assistance to the
SLORC/SPDC by the World Bank, in which it has a major voice, and
other multilateral lenders. Major sanctions were imposed by Presi-
dent Clinton in 1997 (a nonretroactive ban on American investments)
and by President George W. Bush (bans on financial transactions and
imports of Burmese products to the United States) following the
“Black Friday” Incident of May 30, 2003 (renewed in 2004 and
2005). However, these measures did not affect the Yadana Pipeline
Project, in which a U.S. oil company, Unocal, had a share. Business
interests inside the United States opposed sanctions for economic
reasons, and some critics argued that the 2003 import ban was coun-
terproductive, harming ordinary Burmese workers rather than the
military junta.
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UNITED WA STATE ARMY • 465

The State Peace and Development Council has assailed the

United States in the official media as a neoimperialist power and has
warned its people that Washington might attempt an invasion of their
country similar to that of Iraq. Civil servants have been given special
military training to prepare for this eventuality. But official anti-
Americanism seems to find limited resonance among ordinary peo-
ple, whose main concerns are daily economic woes rather than a
neoimperialist replay of Iraq and Afghanistan. See also EUROPEAN
UNION, RELATIONS WITH.

UNITED WA STATE ARMY (UWSA). At the beginning of the 21st

century, the most powerful ethnic minority armed group in Burma,
with a strength of 20,000 men and a notorious reputation as South-
east Asia’s best organized “narco-army.” Although statistics are un-
reliable, it is believed to make as much as US$550 million a year
from the sale of opium, heroin, and amphetamines to international
markets. The UWSA was established in November 1989, after a
mutiny by ethnic commanders led to the breakup of the Communist
Party of Burma, and was one of the first armed groups to sign a
cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC). Its leader since 1989 has been Bao Youxiang, who also
became chairman of its political wing, the United Wa State Party, af-
ter its first chairman, Chao Ngi Lai, died of a stroke in 1995. Its head-
quarters are at Panghsang, a Burma–China border town that has
grown prosperous through the drug trade.
The UWSA not only controls the traditional Wa States region east
of the Salween (Thanlwin) River in Shan State but also occupies
extensive territories along the Thai–Burma border, especially around
Tachilek and Mong Yawn (Mong Yun). Both locations enable it to ex-
port large amounts of drugs by way of Yunnan Province in China and
northern Thailand. To consolidate its control over the southern re-
gion, in 1999 the UWSA began to relocate some 100,000 Wa vil-
lagers to the Burma–Thai border; there were many instances of
forced relocation, and the new settlers suffered because of inade-
quate supplies and because their new homes were in a hotter climate
than their native highlands. Moreover, many of the original inhabi-
tants of the resettlement areas, mostly Shan and Lahu, were driven
from their villages.
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466 • UPPER BURMA

After the cease-fire with the SLORC was signed, the cultivation
and export of opium and heroin in areas under UWSA control in-
creased tremendously. Bao Youxiang has promised that his territo-
ries will be “opium free” by 2005, but nothing has been done about
the trade in cheap amphetamines (known in the Thai language as
yaabaa, “crazy medicine”), 80 percent of which is controlled by the
UWSA.
The UWSA has proven to be both a blessing and a curse for the
State Peace and Development Council. It has played an effective
role in the junta’s “divide and rule” strategies in Shan State: UWSA
pressure contributed to Khun Sa’s decision to sign a cease-fire in Jan-
uary 1996, causing the breakup of his Mong Tai Army, which had
been strong enough to frustrate the military regime’s objective of con-
trolling central and southern Shan State. But the UWSA is powerful
enough to deny the Tatmadaw access to its own territories, in contrast
to the situation in Kokang, where the Myanmar National Demo-
cratic Alliance Army, another cease-fire group, is much weaker and
internally divided. The UWSA’s aggressive behavior has led to occa-
sional border clashes with the Thai Army, though border problems
have not prevented political and business leaders in Bangkok from
pursuing profitable relations with the SPDC.
Flush with cash from drug dealing, the UWSA has expanded into
a variety of businesses. It controls the Myanmar May Flower Group,
a Rangoon (Yangon)-based enterprise that includes one of Burma’s
largest private banks, and has a stake in Yangon Airways, a private
airline that caters to Burma’s tourist trade. Reports by the few out-
sider observers to enter Wa territory indicate that while UWSA lead-
ers like Bao are fabulously wealthy, ordinary Wa people endure some
of the worst poverty in Burma.

UPPER BURMA. A term used by the British in the 19th and early 20th
centuries to refer to those territories ruled by the Konbaung Dynasty
until the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885). Upper Burma was
sometimes referred to as “Ava,” the name of a royal capital. It in-
cludes present-day Mandalay, Magwe (Magway), and Sagaing Di-
visions, and its chief urban center is Mandalay, Burma’s last royal
capital. It is bisected by the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River, tradi-
tionally the main artery of transportation. Like Lower Burma, Upper
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“VIP GRIDS” • 467

Burma has a strong geographic and historical identity. Largely iso-

lated from the outside world by mountain ranges that separate it from
China, India, and Thailand, it is the home of the Burmans (Bamars)
and is relatively homogeneous ethnically. Except for irrigated areas,
such as Kyaukse, its agricultural potential has been limited by lack of
water. During the colonial era, both regions constituted Burma
Proper, in contrast to the Frontier Areas. See also ADMINISTRA-
TION OF BURMA, BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD; DRY ZONE.

–V–

VINAYA. Wini in the Burmese (Myanmar) language, the 227 rules

that all members of the Sangha are expected to observe. They are
found in the Vinaya Pitaka, one of the three “baskets” of the Bud-
dhist scriptures (Tipitaka), and are divided into eight categories, de-
pending on their importance, and the sanctions used in punishing
transgressions of them, ranging from prohibitions against killing and
sexual intercourse to detailed prescriptions concerning how the saf-
fron robe is to be worn, the time for taking meals, and proper rela-
tions within the monastic community and with laypeople. Practically
every aspect of human behavior is affected, and differences between
the various sects (gaing) of Burmese Buddhism generally concern di-
vergent interpretations of vinaya rules, rather than doctrine.

“VIP GRIDS.” Because of the poor state of the electric power–gen-

erating infrastructure, including the dilapidated Baluchaung Hy-
droelectric plant in Kayah State, which had been built with Japan-
ese war reparations in the 1950s, electric power in Rangoon
(Yangon) and other areas is intermittent, especially during the dry
season. To obtain electricity during blackouts and brownouts, res-
idents use Chinese- and Japanese-made generators, which are
noisy, polluting, and sometimes undependable, or purchase elec-
tricity from those who have a reliable source. Intermittent power
cuts do great damage to machinery, especially computers. How-
ever, high-ranking Tatmadaw officers and other VIPs (“very im-
portant persons”) live in areas where electricity is available 24
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468 • “VISIT MYANMAR YEAR”

hours a day, seven days a week, the “VIP Grids,” which include
Bogyoke Ywa (“generals’ villages”).

“VISIT MYANMAR YEAR” (1996–1997). A campaign carried out

by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to
bring 500,000 foreign visitors to Burma in 1996–1997. In anticipa-
tion of the huge money-making potential of tourism, the SLORC en-
tered into joint ventures with foreign companies to build luxury ho-
tels and establish two new airlines, Air Mandalay and Yangon
Airways, to carry tourists between favored destinations, especially
Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, Pagan (Bagan), and Inle Lake in
Shan State. Some old hotels, like the Strand in Rangoon, were com-
pletely renovated, and tourist visas were lengthened from 7 to 28
days. However, after her release from house arrest in July 1995, Aung
San Suu Kyi urged an international boycott of “Visit Myanmar
Year,” claiming that tourist revenues would support an illegitimate
regime and that the development of many tourist sites, like the moat
of Mandalay Palace, involved forced labor and forced relocation.
The campaign never reached its goal of half a million visitors (it was
closer to 200,000), and Daw Suu Kyi’s opposition to international
tourism embittered already-delicate relations between her and mem-
bers of the SLORC. See also SANCTIONS.

–W–

WA STATES. A region of northeastern Shan State, between the Sal-

ween (Thanlwin) River and the Chinese border, south of Kokang
and northwest of Keng Tung, which is the homeland of the Was.
With an area of about 6,000 square miles, one-tenth the area of Shan
State, it is extremely remote and mountainous. Neither the British nor
the governments of independent Burma succeeded in imposing ef-
fective control. According to James George Scott, writing in 1906:
“the Wa States are . . . not administered, and not very thoroughly ex-
plored, but the boundary has been mapped and notified to the Chi-
nese Government” (Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information,
[1921] 1999, 2). Once the Communist Party of Burma established
its headquarters at Panghsang on the Chinese border in 1968, the Wa
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WAS • 469

States felt the impact of war and heavy Chinese influence. Until re-
cently, the core of the Wa States, an area of about 2,600 square kilo-
meters (1,000 square miles), was inhabited by the “Wild Wa,” a fierce
group of headhunters who lived in well-fortified hilltop villages and
were ruled by ramang (chiefs), the heads of a confederation of three
or four villages. Beyond this, there appears to have been no stable po-
litical organization, making the term “states” rather misleading.
Headhunting seems to have stopped only in the 1970s. In 1989, the
United Wa State Army established its headquarters at Panghsang
and divided the original Wa States into 11 districts. The area remains
one of Burma’s poorest and most undeveloped, dependent on the cul-
tivation of opium poppies.

WARERU, KING (r. 1287–1296). Though probably Tai, Wareru

founded a powerful Mon dynasty in Lower Burma. He was an offi-
cer at the court of the king of Sukhothai, in what is now Thailand,
who allegedly eloped with the king’s daughter to Martaban (Mot-
tama) in 1280–1281, where he helped Mon rebels expel the Bur-
mans (Bamars) from the region. Killing his principal Mon ally and
establishing himself as an independent ruler with Martaban as his
capital (it was later moved to Hanthawaddy), he is renowned for
having sponsored the compiling of Burma’s first Dhammathat, or
law code. His descendants, Razadarit (r. 1385–1423), Shinsawbu (r.
1453–72), and Dhammazedi (r. 1472–92), presided over a Mon
golden age, but the last ruler of Wareru’s line, Takayutpi, was over-
thrown by Tabinshwehti in 1539. See also TOUNGOO DYNASTY.

WAS. An ethnic minority group who live in northeastern Shan State

and adjacent areas of China’s Yunnan Province, though before the
coming of the Shans (Tai) they were more widespread and were
probably the original inhabitants of Keng Tung. Of importance to the
Wa people is Lake Nawngkhio (Nawng Kheo), near the present Chi-
nese border, which is said to be their mythic place of origin. They
speak a language belonging to the Wa-Palaung subgroup of the Mon-
Khmer language group; in recent years, heavy Chinese influence has
resulted in the widespread use of Mandarin.
Their homeland, the Wa States, bounded by the Salween (Thanl-
win) River on the west and the Chinese border on the east, south of
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470 • WAS

Kokang, is composed of mountains and steep-sloped hills and has

little agricultural potential, leaving the Wa poor and undeveloped.
Slash-and-burn agriculture has left many of the slopes denuded of
vegetation. To generate income, they have become heavily dependent
on the cultivation of opium poppies, the drug being exported to
neighboring countries by the United Wa State Army (UWSA).
During the British colonial period, the Wa States were so remote
that only in 1937 were officials of the colonial regime, two in num-
ber, posted there. Both the Shans and the British divided the Wa into
two groups: the “Tame Wa,” who were exposed to Buddhism, influ-
enced by Shan customs and were usually part of the jurisdiction of a
Shan sawbwa, and the “Wild Wa,” who lived in the remotest areas,
were animists, and practiced head-hunting (a “skull grove” outside of
Wa villages was believed to ensure good harvests and protection
from disease and calamity). The Wild Wa had a fearsome reputation,
which kept intruders out, and their hilltop villages were strongly for-
tified. In James G. Scott’s words, “(t)he race is brave, independent,
energetic, ingenious, and industrious. . . . The taking of a head is a
sacrificial act, not an example of brutal ferocity” (Burma: A Hand-
book of Practical Information, [1921] 1999, 141).
The remoteness of the Wa States left them out of the mainstream
of Burmese and even Frontier Area history; they were not included
in the 1922 Shan States Federation and were largely untouched by
World War II. Although some Wa fighters joined Shan State insur-
gencies, it was only with the establishment of a strong Communist
Party of Burma (CPB) base on the China–Burma border in January
1968 that their region was fully opened to outside influences, prima-
rily from China. They formed a majority of the CPB’s People’s
Army, often serving as “cannon fodder” in pitched battles with the
Tatmadaw. Now they serve as soldiers in the 20,000-man strong
UWSA. According to Shan sources, Wa women outnumber men
three to one because of the decades of bitter warfare.
No one can say with confidence how many Wa there are. The
UWSA claimed in 1994 that they numbered half a million. In the late
1990s, the armed group began relocating 100,000 of them from their
mountain homeland to the Thai–Burma border area, around Mong
Yawn, part of a UWSA strategy to acquire a strategic position in
southern Shan State from which to export drugs, especially amphet-
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WATER TRANSPORT • 471

amines, to Thailand. The significant Wa presence in the south was

made possible by the surrender of Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army in
January 1996, but it has caused great hardship, both to the relocated
Wa and to Shan and Lahu people who were forced to leave their vil-
lages. The Wa have always been good fighters and now constitute the
strongest ethnic minority armed group in Burma, but while the lead-
ership, including UWSA commander Bao Youxiang, grows rich on
the drug trade, ordinary Wa remain among the poorest people in
Burma and lack even the most elementary social services.

WAT ZOM KHAM (WAT JONG KHAM). A major Buddhist site in

Keng Tung, eastern Shan State, which according to legend stands at
a place visited by Gotama Buddha during his lifetime, but probably
dates from the late 13th century, when Keng Tung was established.
The stupa, 38 meters high, is said to contain six strands of the Bud-
dha’s hair. The use of the term wat to refer to the site (and others in
Keng Tung) reflects affinities with Thailand, where the word is used
to refer to Buddhist temples and pagodas.

WATER TRANSPORT. Burma is blessed with navigable rivers, espe-

cially the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) and Chindwin (Chindwinn),
and river transport was long the principal mode of transport between
Upper and Lower Burma. Navigable rivers are estimated to total
6,452 kilometers (4,000 miles), of which about half are in the Ir-
rawaddy Delta. Rangoon (Yangon) has been connected to the Ir-
rawaddy River by the 35-kilometer-long (22-mile-long) Twante
Canal since the late 19th century, when it was constructed by the
British. During the colonial period, river boats carried more passen-
gers and freight than rail transport; in central Burma, the Scottish-
owned Irrawaddy Flotilla Company operated a virtual monopoly,
squeezing out local competitors. When Burma attained independence
in 1948, the Irrawaddy Flotilla and the Arakan Flotilla Companies
were nationalized and merged under the Inland Water Transport
Board (known as the Inland Water Transport Corporation after 1972).
Since 1988, China has invested heavily in Burma’s water transport
facilities, including both powered vessels and barges.
Coastal shipping is extensive. Oceangoing vessels are owned by
Myanmar Five Star Line, a state corporation established in 1959, and
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472 • WEEK, BURMESE

the major port is Rangoon, whose facilities are being modernized.

Since the Ne Win era, many young Burmese men have served in the
world’s merchant marine as a way of earning hard currency, though
not necessarily on Burmese-registered ships.

WEEK, BURMESE. The traditional Burmese week has eight rather

than seven days; to accommodate this, Wednesday morning and af-
ternoon in the Western system each count as a separate day. As in
many other societies, individual character is said to be determined by
the day on which people are born, for example, those born on Tues-
day are honest, those on Saturday bad tempered, etc. A person born
on a “compatible” day of the week with one’s own is considered a de-
sirable marriage partner. In early childhood, a very detailed horo-
scope (Burmese, sada) is often drawn up by a practitioner of astrol-
ogy to guide the child through his or her life. Each day of the week
has its own planet, animal, and cardinal direction. The platforms of
pagodas (most famously the Shwe Dagon Pagoda) frequently con-
tain shrines set at appropriate points of the compass for each day of
the week.

WEIKZA. Also wei’za, a practitioner of occult or supernatural arts who

acquires special powers through alchemy, magic amulets, mantras,
magic letters (Burmese “runes”), and other devices, and can aid peo-
ple in distress. Belief in weikzas and the growth of cults (gaing) as-
sociated with them seem to be relatively modern developments, per-
haps a response to the shock of British colonial occupation. They are
neither members of the Sangha nor nats, but are an important ele-
ment in the folklore of popular Buddhism. Although occult figures
going back at least to the Pagan Dynasty are identified by Burmese
sources as weikzas, along with the devout Mon king, Dhammazedi
(r. 1472–1492), the most prominent example is Bo Bo Aung, a con-
temporary and adversary of King Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819). Belief
in these figures seems to flourish in times of stress and uncertainty.
Although the governments of U Nu and Ne Win attempted to sup-
press the more extreme weiksa cults in favor of orthodox Buddhist
practices, the cults retained their popularity, even among military of-
ficers who supposedly espoused modernist, socialist ideology. Ap-
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WIN TIN, U • 473

parently, they remain important in the religious life of Burmese peo-

ple under the State Peace and Development Council.

WHITE BRIDGE INCIDENT (MARCH 16, 1988). Also known as

the “White Bridge Massacre,” an incident that took place on an em-
bankment along the western shore of Inya Lake in Rangoon (Yan-
gon), where student demonstrators marching from Rangoon Univer-
sity to the Rangoon Institute of Technology were attacked by the
Riot Police (Lon Htein). According to a letter written to Ne Win by
Aung Gyi on June 8, 1988, almost 300 students were killed, many
drowned in the lake by Riot Police personnel. See also DEMOC-
RACY SUMMER; TEA SHOP INCIDENT.

WHOLE TOWNSHIP EXTENSION PROGRAM. In the late 1970s,

the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime sought to increase
agricultural yields by promoting the cultivation of high-yield vari-
eties of rice, which had been initially developed at the International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. In the 1977–1978
planting year, the varieties were introduced to two townships, and by
1982–1983 had spread to more than 50 percent of the country’s rice
lands. The program was initially a great success: Paddy yields also
increased by 50 percent. But these increases could not be sustained
because of variable weather conditions and inadequate investment in
fertilizers, pesticides, and farm mechanization. Also, the state threat-
ened many farmers with expropriation of their land if they did not
plant the new varieties. However, many Burmese consumers found
them less tasty than traditional varieties of rice. See also AGRICUL-
TURE; ECONOMY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, BURMA SO-
CIALIST PROGRAMME PARTY ERA.

WIN TIN, U (1930– ). A distinguished journalist and writer, at present

one of Burma’s most prominent political prisoners. He served as editor
of the Hanthawaddy newspaper until 1978, when the presentation of a
paper critical of the Burma Socialist Programme Party at a writers’
circle he sponsored resulted in his losing his post and the Hanthawaddy
being closed down by the government. Between 1978 and 1988, he
was a freelance writer, then became active in the Burma Writers’ Union
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474 • WISARA, U

during 1988 and secretary to the executive committee of the National

League for Democracy, advising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other
NLD leaders. Imprisoned in June 1989 for allegedly having a tele-
phone conversation with an antistate element, his prison sentence was
extended without trial three times, and he remained confined as of mid-
2005. Suffering from ill health, he has been kept since 1997 in guarded
hospital wards at Insein Jail and Rangoon General Hospital.

WISARA, U (1888–1929). One of the most prominent “political

pongyis,” U Wisara was born near Monywa in what is now Sagaing
Division and decided to devote his life to the Buddhist religion
around the age of 20. When monastic superiors chastised him for be-
coming involved in politics, he and like-minded young monks estab-
lished their own monastic community in Pakkoku, now in Magwe
(Magway) Division. In 1923, he went to Rangoon (Yangon), associ-
ated with U Ottama, and under his sponsorship spent two years in In-
dia. Upon returning home, U Wisara made political speeches and was
repeatedly imprisoned by the colonial authorities. His hunger strikes
while in jail to be allowed to observe the vinaya rules (especially
wearing saffron robes rather than a convict’s outfit), as well as abuses
inflicted by his jailors, ruined his health. He was arrested and jailed
one last time in April 1929. He died on September 19, 1929, after a
166-day hunger strike, undertaken to persuade the authorities to re-
spect the rights of jailed monks. He became a martyr of the indepen-
dence movement, and in 1940 a statue of him was erected near the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, where it stands today.

WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY. During the British colonial pe-

riod, European observers were impressed by the apparent equality of
the sexes in Burmese society, claiming, as James George Scott did,
that “a married Burmese woman is much more independent than any
European woman even in the most advanced states” (The Burman,
[1883] 1963, 52). Women not only managed household finances but
also played a major role in retail trade, their business acumen widely
considered superior to that of the average Burmese man. This is still
true today; for example, the wives of high-ranking military officers
have made large amounts of money from private and black market
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WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY • 475

businesses, while their menfolk, in Ne Win’s words, “only know how

to fight.”
Traditionally, Burmese women have been free of the stifling re-
strictions of the patriarchal family system, such as those found in
China, India, and Japan. In patriarchal systems, the primary role of
the woman is to provide a male heir for her husband’s family, with
whom she lives, largely severing her ties with her own parents and
siblings. In the Burmese case, the family system is bilateral (descent
through both the father’s and mother’s line, rather than the father’s
alone), and married women remain close to their own parents. Inher-
itances are shared between sons and daughters, rather than by sons
only, and a divorced woman is entitled to take away from the failed
marriage her own property, which even in traditional law was recog-
nized as different from that of her husband. Burmese parents with
several daughters but no sons would not be considered especially un-
fortunate; if the daughters marry well (e.g., a military officer), they
can generously support their parents in their old age.
Most fundamentally, there is none of the strong discrimination
against the birth and upbringing of daughters in Burma that one finds
in India or some East Asian countries, and female infanticide appears
to be rare. According to recent UN statistics, there are 101 women
and girls per 100 males in Burma’s rural areas and 100 females per
100 males in urban areas, a natural ratio. In India, the ratios are 96 fe-
males per 100 males in rural and 88 females per 100 males in urban
areas, reflecting the widespread practice of abortion of female fetuses
and the overall lower survival rates of girls due to harsh treatment or
neglect, compared to boys.
In precolonial Burma, educational opportunities for girls were
available at village monastery schools, although females could not
(and cannot) become members of the Sangha (the practice of or-
daining nuns having been lost to the Theravada branch of Bud-
dhism). In the colonial and postcolonial eras, a large percentage of
the student bodies at the University of Rangoon (Yangon) and other
institutions have been women. They have freely entered the profes-
sions. For example, Daw Khin Kyi, wife of Aung San and mother
of Aung San Suu Kyi, served as Burma’s ambassador to India, and
such women as Ludu Daw Amar have been prominent on the literary
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476 • WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY

scene. However, the freedoms that Burmese women enjoy are not
equivalent to 100-percent equality with men in terms of social roles.
In the religious sphere, women are not only prohibited from joining
the Sangha, but it is also believed that only men can achieve nibbana;
women cannot enter certain holy places, such as the upper platform of
the Shwe Dagon Pagoda or the space directly in front of the Maha
Muni Buddha Image in Mandalay. The shinbyu ceremony for
young boys entering the monkhood far overshadows girls’ coming-of-
age rite, the ear-boring (natwin) ceremony.
Men are commonly believed to possess a certain authority or
power (hpoun) that would be diminished if they find themselves
placed in any situation where their inferior position to women is ap-
parent, for example, sitting below a woman on a crowded bus or ferry
boat or allowing their heads to pass beneath a woman’s garments on
a clothesline. Burmese women are expected to show deference to
men, especially their husbands, even if this is only for show. A major
reason for the strong antipathy that Senior General Than Shwe and
other members of the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) feel toward Aung San Suu Kyi is her insistence upon ex-
pressing her opinions frankly and interacting with them as equals.
Her behavior is seen as very “Western” and antipathetic to traditional
values, though she is also greatly admired for her courage. It is prob-
ably significant that during its long history, Burma has had only one
major female ruler, the Mon Queen Shinsawbu.
Military values and military control of the political system since
1962 have resulted in a decline in Burmese women’s social status,
compared to the parliamentary and even British colonial eras. Burma
is one of the few countries (another being Saudi Arabia) where
women at present hold no important government posts. Ethnic mi-
nority women have suffered worst of all from human rights abuses,
including the apparently systematic rape of Karen (Kayin) and Shan
women by Tatmadaw officers and men.
Even in central Burma, economic stagnation and the deterioration
of health and educational services since 1988 have had an especially
harsh impact on women’s lives. The recent growth in the sex indus-
try, which previously had not been a major social problem, reflects
the fact that for both ethnic minority and Burman women with fam-
ilies to support, few other types of employment are widely available.
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WORLD WAR II, ETHNIC MINORITIES IN • 477

More than 40,000 Burmese women work in brothels in neighboring

Thailand. Nongovernmental organizations have been established to
deal with women’s issues, some of which enjoy the patronage of the
wives of SPDC generals, but for the great majority of women, facing
a grim day-to-day struggle to survive, the freedoms enjoyed by their
mothers and grandmothers are a distant dream.

WORLD WAR II, ETHNIC MINORITIES IN. World War II and the
Japanese Occupation transformed relations between the indigenous
and nonindigenous ethnic minorities and the Burman (Bamar) eth-
nic majority. In Lower Burma, the Japanese invasion and anti-
Indian incidents led to the departure of more than half a million per-
sons of South Asian descent in early 1942. They returned to the
British-ruled subcontinent, often overland under conditions of great
hardship. Only a few went back to Burma after the war, meaning that
South Asians (including people from what are now India, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh) exercised significantly reduced economic and social
influence compared to before 1941. The Overseas Chinese and Sino-
Burmese sometimes suffered harsh treatment at the hands of the
Japanese, but apparently not the systematic atrocities endured by the
Chinese in Singapore and Malaya. The Anglo-Burmese (Eurasians)
seem not to have been systematically persecuted, but they lost the fa-
vorable connections provided by British rule. Violent race riots broke
out between Buddhist and Muslim residents of Arakan after British
authority there collapsed in early 1942.
Generally loyal to the British, the Karens (Kayins) of the Ir-
rawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River Delta region and the hills east of
the Sittang (Sittoung) River endured atrocities at the hands of the
Burma Independence Army and the Japanese, and organized
guerrilla resistance with the help of Force 136. The British supplied
the hill Karens with weapons, which they used with great effect
against retreating Japanese troops in 1945. Although Dr. Ba Maw
and General Aung San tried to win their trust, Karen wartime
experiences engendered strong opposition to their inclusion in any
Burman-dominated state, leading to the 1949 uprising by the Karen
National Union.
With a few exceptions, the Kachins, Chins, and Nagas, who
lived along Burma’s mountainous borders with India and China,
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478 • WORLD WAR II IN BURMA

supported the British. This was because of traditionally close ties

between their leaders and the colonizers (including in many cases a
common Christian faith), the inclusion of these groups in the colo-
nial armed forces, and the fact that many hill areas were not firmly
under Japanese control. These groups, along with the hill Karens,
played a significant role in the Allied recapture of Burma in
1944–1945. The Shans, whose sawbwa (saohpa) or rulers were
confirmed in their semifeudal status under Japanese rule, remained
largely aloof from the war, though many Shans were alienated by
the Japanese decision to give the states of Keng Tung and Mong-
pan to Thailand in 1943.
In conclusion, the war, which enshrined the politics of armed vio-
lence, broke down Burma’s multiethnic plural society and shattered
the ethnic peace that had been imposed by the British since the late
19th century. The Japanese-supported government of Dr. Ba Maw,
moreover, espoused a specifically Burman cultural and national iden-
tity, creating Burma’s first “postcolonial state.” Though Ba Maw and
Aung San sought ethnic inclusiveness, many of their subordinates
(especially in the armed forces) were afflicted by Burman chauvin-
ism. Among minorities, such as the Kachins and Karens, fighting
alongside the British and Americans gave them the experience they
needed when they began insurgencies against the Rangoon govern-
ment after the war. See also MYAUNGMYA MASSACRES; PANG-
LONG CONFERENCE; WORLD WAR II AND BURMA (MILI-
TARY OPERATIONS).

WORLD WAR II IN BURMA (MILITARY OPERATIONS). Burma

was the site of some of the largest battles of World War II. Following
the outbreak of war between Japan and Britain on December 8, 1941,
the Japanese air force carried out bombing raids against Rangoon
(Yangon) and other targets, causing considerable demoralization. El-
ements of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, based in Thailand, had cap-
tured Kawthaung (Victoria Point, Burma’s southernmost point),
Tavoy (Dawei), Mergui (Myeik), and the key town of Moulmein
(Mawlamyine) by the end of January 1942, and crossed the Sittang
(Sittoung) River in late February (British orders to demolish the Sit-
tang Bridge on February 23, while some of their forces were still east
of the river, remain highly controversial). Rangoon was evacuated by
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WORLD WAR II IN BURMA • 479

the British and occupied by the Japanese on March 9. Between

March and May 1942, the Fifteenth Army succeeded in driving north
along the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) River and the Pegu (Bago)-
Mandalay road, thwarting British plans to maintain control of Up-
per Burma with the assistance of Chinese Nationalist (Kuom-
intang) troops concentrated at Toungoo (Taungoo). Mandalay fell
on May 1. Lashio was captured on May 8, and the Burma Road was
cut. Allied forces staged a retreat overland to northeastern India, their
troops ravaged by disease and starvation. But they remained largely
intact, to fight another day.
Japanese victory in the first Battle of Burma can be attributed to
superior numbers, superior mobility and maneuverability (British
forces were repeatedly outflanked and encircled), control of the air
(reflecting the technical superiority and greater numbers of the Japan-
ese Zero fighter compared to its Allied counterparts), and the support
provided by the Burma Independence Army (BIA). The BIA’s con-
tribution was as much psychological as military because its fighting
alongside Japanese troops gave rise to Burmese hopes, ultimately
disappointed, that a victorious Japan would grant their country im-
mediate independence.
The year 1943 witnessed an unsuccessful British attempt to dis-
lodge the Japanese from their positions in what is now Arakan
(Rakhine) State, and the more successful incursion of the Chindits
deep into Japanese-held territory in northern Burma, an operation
that did much to raise Allied morale. The South-East Asia Command
under Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten was established in
August, with responsibility for joint Allied operations in the Indian
Ocean and adjacent areas.
The ill-advised Imphal Campaign of March–June 1944 cost the
Japanese as many as 80,000 casualties, undermining the Fifteenth
Army’s ability to defend Upper Burma. An American force, nicknamed
Merrill’s Marauders, moved along the Ledo Road and captured the
airfield near Myitkyina (now the capital of Kachin State) in May
1944. British XIVth Army commander General William Slim, one of
the Allies’ ablest field commanders, began an offensive from India into
northern Burma in late 1944. By February 1945, British forces had
crossed the Irrawaddy; in early March, they captured the strategically
important town of Meiktila, south of Mandalay. Mandalay itself was
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480 • WUNTHANU ATHIN

secured on March 19, although Mandalay Palace was incinerated in

Allied air attacks. The push into southern Burma was slowed only by
the start of the monsoon, and Japanese forces began a desperate re-
treat from central Burma toward the Sittang River and the
Thai–Burma border, where Karen (Kayin) guerrillas killed many of
them. Rangoon, evacuated by the Japanese, was recaptured without a
fight on May 2–3.
Allied military successes in 1944–1945 were attributable to their
growing material superiority over the Japanese, both in weapons and
troop support. The stubborn insistence of Japanese commanders that
their men could achieve victory through will power alone, with little
or no logistical support, needlessly wasted many lives. Japanese in-
fantrymen often lacked both food and bullets. Moreover, Allied com-
manders had learned from the bitter experiences of 1942 to exercise
greater flexibility and mobility in operations. The effective use of ar-
mor on the plains of central Burma and airdrops to supply troops on
the ground (e.g., the Chindit incursions and the battle of the “Admin
Box” in Arakan in 1944) were also decisive factors. The uprising of
the Burma National Army against the Japanese on March 27, 1945,
provided the Allies with important sources of intelligence, though a
greater contribution was probably made by Karen and other guerril-
las organized by Force 136.
Burma was devastated twice by large-scale fighting, in 1942 and
1944–1945. Japanese forces in the country totaled 303,501, but only
118,352 were repatriated to Japan after the war. British and Com-
monwealth casualties amounted to 73,909, of whom more than half
were from the British Indian Army. Nationalist Chinese casualties
during 1942 appear to have been tremendous, though uncounted.
There are no reliable statistics on the number of Burmese soldiers and
civilians who died during the war, but after December 1941 it was
men with guns, rather than politicians or civil servants, who deter-
mined the country’s future. See also JAPANESE OCCUPATION;
PATRIOTIC BURMESE FORCES; WORLD WAR II, ETHNIC MI-
NORITIES IN.

WUNTHANU ATHIN. “Patriotic” or “nationalist associations” (Ba

Maw translates wunthanu as “racially faithful ones”) established in
rural villages that were closely associated with the General Council
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YADANA PIPELINE PROJECT • 481

of Burmese Associations (GCBA) and the General Council of

Sangha Sammeggi (GCSS). They played a major role in political
mobilization against British colonial rule before the Saya San
(Hsaya San) Rebellion of 1930–1932. Thousands of these associa-
tions operated on the local level, charged with promoting pride in
Burmese tradition, national identity, and the Buddhist religion and
with agitating against oppressive measures such as the 1907 Village
Act, which imposed heavy forced labor burdens on the populace.
“Political pongyis” played a key role in their activities. Because lo-
cal wunthanu athin leaders constituted, in a sense, an alternative
source of authority to the village headmen appointed by the British,
they were subject to harsh government measures.

–Y–

YA NAING, BO (1919–1989). Nom de guerre of Ko Tun Shein, one of

the Thirty Comrades and son-in-law of Dr. Ba Maw. He played a
leading role in the Rangoon University Students Union and the All
Burma Students Union from 1938 to 1941, and after the Burma In-
dependence Army was established in December 1941, won distinc-
tion as a commander fighting the British at Shwedaung, near Prome
(Pyay). In 1944–1945, he was commandant of the military academy
established by the Japanese at Mingaladon. After World War II, he
was active in opposition politics. In 1969 he joined the Parliamen-
tary Democracy Party of U Nu and became one of the commanders
of the former prime minister’s antigovernment insurgency based in
the Thai–Burma border area. He returned to Burma following an
amnesty proclaimed by Ne Win in 1980, but after the power seizure
by the State Law and Order Restoration Council in September
1988, he helped U Nu organize his own party, the League for De-
mocracy and Peace.

YADANA PIPELINE PROJECT. One of the largest joint ventures

funded by foreign investment in Burma since 1988 (US$1.2 billion),
constructed by a consortium consisting of the Myanmar Oil and Gas
Enterprise, the French oil company Total, Unocal of the United
States, and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand. With a length of 666
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482 • YANGON CITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

kilometers, the pipeline extends from the Yadana natural gas field in
the Andaman Sea, just south of Rangoon (Yangon) over water and
land, a land corridor in northern Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division
reaching to Thailand, where the gas is used to generate electricity.
The project is controversial for two reasons: It generates as much as
US$400 million in revenues annually for the State Peace and De-
velopment Council, and construction of the pipeline and associated
facilities involved extensive forced labor and forced relocation in
Tenasserim Division, especially of Karen (Kayin) and Mon vil-
lagers. Security was provided by the Tatmadaw, which applied the
“Four Cuts” policy to local insurgents and their civilian supporters.
A similar project was initiated at the Yetagun natural gas field, in-
volving Japanese, British, and Malaysian partners. Both projects
were targets of campaigning by international nongovernmental or-
ganizations, and Unocal was brought to court in the United States
for complicity in human rights abuses.

YANGON CITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE (YCDC). In

May 1990, the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) established the YCDC as an agency on the same level as
the Cabinet, exercising considerable autonomy. Its membership,
numbering between 7 and 15, is appointed by the SLORC (known af-
ter 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council), and its
chairman serves concurrently as Mayor of Rangoon (Yangon). Its
responsibilities are wide-ranging: establishment and management of
new towns; infrastructure projects, such as highways, reservoirs, and
parks; land-use administration; control of illegal residents; and the
collection of taxes to be used on city projects. It has the authority to
enter into joint ventures with foreign companies and borrow funds
from abroad, and has evolved into one of the country’s largest busi-
ness conglomerates, operating hotels and golf courses. A similar
agency has been established for Mandalay, although the Mandalay
City Development Committee seems to exercise less autonomy.

YAWNGHWE (NYAUNGSHWE). One of the Shan States, whose

last sawbwa, Sao Shwe Taik, was the first president of the Union of
Burma (1948–1952) and a prominent leader of the Federal Move-
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YENANGYAUNG • 483

ment. Located in southwestern Shan State, it had a land area of

around 3,600 square kilometers (1,400 square miles), and its most
prominent feature was Inle Lake. The town of Yawnghwe near the
lakeshore is the site of the haw of the Yawnghwe sawbwas. Located
nearby is Taunggyi, the Shan State capital. See also INTHA.

YEDAYA (YADAYA). Magical rituals used by many Burmese to prevent

misfortune. Building a pagoda is considered an effective method. In
late 1961, the government of U Nu ordered the construction of 60,000
sand pagodas throughout the country to prevent the occurrence of a
terrible calamity, possibly a world war, predicted for the following
year. Ne Win, a devoted practitioner of yedaya, is said to have decreed
that cars in Burma must drive on the right rather than left side of the
road (the previous practice, inherited from British colonial days) to
neutralize the threat of an insurgency; the former cancels out, or coun-
teracts, the latter. When the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) sponsored construction of a complex to house a gigantic Bud-
dha image made of white stone at Min Dhamma Hill in northern Ran-
goon (Yangon), it included a large marble replica of a Buddhist
monk’s offering bowl on the platform surrounding the image. The
stone bowl is right side up, meant to counteract the threat of a monks’
boycott of the Tatmadaw, known as Overturning the Offering Bowl
and symbolized by the bowl turned upside down.
Yedaya is closely associated with the practice of astrology because
practitioners of the art claim to foretell inauspicious days, on which
special ritual measures need to be taken. Some monks are skilled in
devising yedaya rituals, which are also sometimes used to obtain a
desirable thing, such as a promotion or a lover’s affections. Many
Burmese believe that the success of both Ne Win and the SPDC junta
in holding onto power is almost entirely due to their skill in using ye-
daya rituals, which allegedly have rescued them from repeated mis-
fortunes. See also NUMEROLOGY.

YENANGYAUNG (YAYNANGYOUNG). A city in Magwe (Mag-

way) Division, with a population estimated at 81,745 in 1996.
Though it has little to offer tourists, it is historically and economi-
cally important as a center for the production of oil since before
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484 • YE–TAVOY (YAY–DAWEI) RAILWAY

British colonial times. Clusters of oil wells can be seen just outside
the town. See also OIL FIELD WORKERS’ STRIKE.

YE–TAVOY (YAY–DAWEI) RAILWAY. A project initiated by the

State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1993 to link the rail-
head at Ye (Yay) in Mon State with Tavoy (Dawei), the capital of
Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division. Its purpose was to facilitate
transportation links with Burma’s resource rich but undeveloped
southern region. Construction involved the forced relocation and
forced labor of mostly Mon and Karen (Kayin) residents; by the
mid-1990s, as many as 300,000 local people were drafted annually to
do uncompensated labor on the project, which critics called the “Sec-
ond Railway of Death.” Many fled and became refugees on the
Thai–Burma border. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA;
THAI–BURMA RAILWAY.

YOUNG MEN’S BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION (YMBA). A national

movement that emerged during the first decade of the 20th century to
defend Buddhism from the corrosive effects of British colonial rule.
In the context of the “separation of religion and state” under the
British, it was not a political organization, although many of the is-
sues it raised had political ramifications. As early as 1897, a Buddha
Sasana Noggaha Association had been established in Mandalay to
revitalize the religion; in 1902, laypeople established the Ashoka So-
ciety in Bassein (Pathein) to promote a modernistic Buddhism. In-
spired both by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)
movement and developments among Buddhists in Sri Lanka, edu-
cated laymen established the first YMBA branch in Arakan
(Rakhine) in 1902; by 1906, there was a branch in Rangoon (Yan-
gon), followed by the establishment of some 50 more branches in
cities and towns nationwide. YMBA members were mostly urban and
well educated. The association maintained student hostels, encour-
aged laypeople to observe Buddhist precepts, and sponsored semi-
nars and discussions on religious topics. In 1916, it called on the gov-
ernment to legally prohibit footwear in pagoda precincts, which had
become an intensely controversial issue because many Europeans re-
fused to doff their shoes and stockings during visits to the Shwe
Dagon Pagoda and other holy sites. The General Council of Bud-
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ZARGANA • 485

dhist Associations served as the YMBA’s national association and

held annual conventions; this became the General Council of
Burmese Associations in 1920, the most important political organi-
zation in the country before the Saya San (Hsaya San) Rebellion of
1930–1932. See also “SHOE QUESTION.”

–Z–

ZARGANA. Popular Burmese comedian whose stage name means

“tweezers” and who is a dentist. He frequently satirized government
corruption and incompetence during the Ne Win era (1962–1988)
and was jailed for refusing to stop lampooning the State Law and
Order Restoration Council after it assumed power in September
1988. On one occasion, he was detained after doing a street routine
implying that the 1996–1997 “Visit Myanmar Year” campaign
would encourage prostitution. See also HUMAN RIGHTS IN
BURMA; MOUSTACHE BROTHERS.
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Bibliography

CONTENTS

Introduction 488
I. General 493
1. Bibliographies and Research Guides 493
2. Directories, Handbooks, Statistical Abstracts, and Yearbooks 494
3. Guides 494
4. Travel and Description 494
II. History 496
1. General 496
2. Prehistory 497
3. Dynastic History (1st Millennium to 19th Century CE) 497
4. Colonial and Pacific War Era (19th–20th Centuries CE) 500
5. Post-Independence Era (1948–1987) 506
6. The Political Crisis of 1988 508
III. Contemporary Burma (Myanmar) 509
1. Population, Ethnicity, and Languages 509
2. Economics and Economic Engagement 511
3. Politics 514
4. Foreign Relations and Security-Military Affairs 519
5. Human Rights 520
6. Social and Public Health Issues 522
7. Religion, Religion in Society 523
IV. Cultural Expression 525
1. Literature 525
2. Architecture, Plastic, and Visual Arts 526
3. Performing Arts 529

487
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488 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

Following the tumultuous events of 1988, Burma’s political, social, and hu-
manitarian crises gained international attention. Before that year, the country
was largely isolated from the rest of the world and was of interest to only a
small number of scholars and specialists. But as this bibliography shows, a
growing quantity of recent publications deal with human rights and ethnic mi-
nority issues, the dynamics of military rule, the democratic opposition, and the
country’s postsocialist “open” economy (including the controversy over
whether foreign countries should implement sanctions against the State Peace
and Development Council or engage with it economically).
In addition, the diffusion of online information services since the mid-
1990s has given both the democratic opposition and the military regime a
new medium through which to present their views. Probably the single great-
est change in Burma-related information over the past decade has been the
crucial role of the Internet in reporting developments inside the country to a
worldwide audience. For example, the unrest in Rangoon connected with la-
bor strikes and the U Thant incident in 1974, arguably a precursor for the
more massive demonstrations of 1988, was little known outside the country.
It merited brief discussion in an essay by Raja Segaram Arumgam in the 1975
edition of Southeast Asian Affairs, and it was only in 1989 that Andrew Selth
published a detailed English-language account (“Death of a Hero: The U
Thant Disturbances in Burma, December 1974”). However, the Alternative
ASEAN Network on Burma (Altsean), a Bangkok-based NGO, provided via
e-mail attachment a detailed and thoroughly cited report on the May 30, 2003,
attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters in northern Burma (“Brief-
ing: Black Friday and the Crackdown on the NLD”) only 12 days after the
event. Doubtless the full story of “Black Friday” will not be known for many
years, but the speed, volume, and ubiquity of online information delivery
means that Burma is no longer a “closed” country despite the efforts of the
SPDC to control domestic information technology and present an alluring
face to the outside world.
One of the oldest online information sources is the BurmaNet News (www
.burmanet.org), which was established in 1994 and provides an electronic “clip-
ping file” of newspaper and periodical articles; it is posted to subscribers about
five times weekly. But the most comprehensive source is the Online
Burma/Myanmar Library (www.burmalibrary.org), which encompasses a vast
and growing amount of information on contemporary developments and some
older sources, such as the Burma Press Summary, a digest of articles from the
Working People’s Daily compiled during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Through the Online Burma Library, one can also access scores of other Burma-
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 489

related sites. The Irrawaddy online (www.irrawaddy.org) is another excellent

and timely source, which provides daily updates on developments inside the
country. The British Broadcasting Corporation also releases informative arti-
cles on Burma through its online news site (news.bbc.co.uk) as well as its spe-
cial Burma page (www.bbc.co.uk/burmese). For readers seeking SPDC per-
spectives, the online Myanmar Times and Weekly Review (www.myanmar.com/
myanmartimes) is upbeat, colorful, and sometimes informative; however, fol-
lowing the purge of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and his Military Intelligence
subordinates in fall 2004, the future of both the online and hardcopy Myanmar
Times remains in doubt.
For many years, the most detailed English language sources on developments
in Burma have been the Thailand-based dailies Bangkok Post and Nation and the
Hong Kong–based weeklies Asiaweek and Far Eastern Economic Review.
Throughout the 1990s, Bertil Lintner, a Review correspondent with a special in-
terest in Burma’s ethnic minority areas, was considered by many observers to be
one of the most informative journalistic sources on the country. But Asiaweek
has ceased publication, and in 2004 the Far Eastern Economic Review ended its
newsmagazine format. Articles on Burma turn up occasionally in the pages of
such publications as The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
But outside of Thailand, the tendency for the country to slip between the cracks
of the mainstream media makes the online sources even more essential.
Annual summaries of events in Burma are published in the January–February
issue of the University of California’s Asian Survey and Southeast Asian Af-
fairs, the latter published yearly by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in
Singapore. The Asia Yearbook, published by the Far Eastern Economic Review,
has been discontinued, but annual issues going back to the Ne Win era provide
detailed descriptions of politics, economics, and foreign relations. Hardcopy
periodicals specializing in Burma include The Irrawaddy magazine, published
monthly by the same people who operate The Irrawaddy online, and the quar-
terly Burma Debate, supported by the Burma Project of the Open Society In-
stitute in New York.
On the events of 1988—the prodemocracy demonstrations, the emergence of
Aung San Suu Kyi as opposition leader, and the bloody seizure of power by the
State Law and Order Restoration Council (predecessor of the SPDC)—the prin-
cipal source remains Lintner’s Outrage: The Struggle for Democracy in Burma;
unfortunately, Japanese journalist Tanabe Hisao’s Biruma Minshuka Undo–
(Burma’s Democracy Movement) has not been translated into English. Dr.
Maung Maung’s last published work, The 1988 Uprising in Burma, reveals
more about the mind of Ne Win’s principal “intellectual” spokesman than it
does about what took place in the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, or Sagaing.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s Freedom from Fear and Other Writings includes her
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490 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

epochal “Speech to a Mass Rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda” on August 26,

1988. Further descriptions and analyses of 1988—on what happened and
why—are much needed.
Useful reference works on politics include To Stand and Be Counted: The
Suppression of Burma’s Members of Parliament, published by the All Burma
Students’ Democratic Front, and Democracy and Politics in Burma: A Collec-
tion of Documents, edited by Marc Weller. Gustaaf Houtman’s Mental Culture
in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for De-
mocracy includes both a criticism of the “state-building” paradigms of
Burmese politics—chiefly Robert H. Taylor’s 1987 work, The State in
Burma—and an interesting attempt to link the confrontation between the
SLORC/SPDC and Daw Suu Kyi to Buddhist values and contrasting concepts
of power. Like E. Sarkisyanz’s Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolu-
tion, published in 1965, it is one of the few Western-language discussions of
Burma’s modern intellectual history and its connection with politics. On this
topic, see also Aung San Suu Kyi’s lengthy essays in Freedom from Fear: “In-
tellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” and “Literature and Na-
tionalism in Burma.”
The Tatmadaw, Burma’s armed forces, are central to any understanding of
Burmese political dynamics. Two recent books—Mary Callahan’s Making En-
emies: War and the State in Burma and Andrew Selth’s Burma’s Armed Forces:
Power without Glory—provide detailed discussions of its history and develop-
ment. Concerning the impact of military rule on daily life, see Christina Fink’s
Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule.
Veteran Burma specialist David Steinberg’s Burma: The State of Myanmar is
a comprehensive introduction to present-day political, economic, and social
conditions. In the early 1990s, many economists described postsocialist, natu-
ral resource–rich Burma as “the next Asian tiger”; more recently, they have de-
bated why, despite promising fundamentals, the country’s economy remains in
a state of perpetual crisis. Good analyses are being written by a group of econ-
omists at Australia’s Macquarie University in the form of Burma Economic
Watch, accessible at www.econ.mq.edu.au/BurmaEconomicWatch. Official
economic statistics are notoriously unreliable, but the Economist Intelligence
Unit’s Burma/Myanmar: Country Profile and Burma/Myanmar: Country Re-
ports are among the most credible sources for economic trends, including GDP
and inflation figures. For historical economic data, see Teruko Saito and Lee
Kin Kiong’s Statistics on the Burmese Economy: The 19th and 20th Centuries.
Burma’s crises in human rights, health, and education are described in de-
tail in Chris Beyrer’s War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast
Asia; Human Rights Watch’s A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of
Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand; and the Asian Human
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 491

Rights Commission’s Voice of the Hungry Nation. Human rights conditions in

the country have been closely monitored since 1988 by international non-
governmental organizations (INGOs), such as Amnesty International and Hu-
man Rights Watch, as well as the United Nations Commission for Human
Rights, the U.S. Department of State, and the International Labour Organiza-
tion, all of which have published detailed reports. The Shan Human Rights
Foundation and the Karen Human Rights Group publish information on con-
ditions in ethnic minority areas.
The two most comprehensive accounts of ethnic politics remain Bertil Lint-
ner’s Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948 and Martin Smith’s
Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, both of which came out in re-
vised editions in the late 1990s. Lintner’s work is especially valuable for its ap-
pendixes, including a detailed chronology and brief descriptions of the bewil-
deringly diverse individuals and organizations involved in ethnic and
communist insurgency. Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe’s The Shan of Burma: Mem-
oirs of a Shan Exile was published in 1987 but remains an invaluable source on
this group’s recent history; on the Chins, see works by Lian Sakhong, espe-
cially In Search of Chin Identity: A Study in Religion, Politics and Ethnic Iden-
tity; on the Mons, Ashley South’s Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma:
The Golden Sheldrake; and on the Karens, Jonathan Falla’s True Love and
Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border and Ananda Rajah’s “Ethnicity,
Nationalism and the Nation-State: The Karen in Burma and Thailand.”
New contributions to the academic study of Burmese history include Thant
Myint-U’s The Making of Modern Burma and articles by Michael W. Charney,
Jacques Leider, Victor Lieberman, Guy Lubeigt, Sunait Chutintaranond, and
Dr. Than Tun. Michael Aung-Thwin’s views on Burmese history, as reflected in
his 1998 book Myth and History in the Early History of Burma: Paradigms,
Primary Sources and Prejudices, are controversial in their attempt to turn
British colonial historiography on its head. Amply and attractively illustrated,
Pamela Gutman’s Burma’s Lost Kingdoms: The Splendour of Arakan describes
a little known but culturally and historically distinct region that until 1784 was
independent of the Burman state.
Although academic studies of dynastic history reach limited audiences, the
bibliography shows the continued popularity of publications about World War
II by British and American writers, especially war veterans. Historian Louis
Allen’s massive and authoritative Burma: The Longest War, 1941–1945 not
only provides details on the various military campaigns (with maps), but also
includes both the Allied and Japanese perspectives and an interesting account,
taken from Japanese sources, of General Mutaguchi Renya’s disastrous deci-
sion to initiate the 1944 Imphal Campaign, an invasion of northeastern India.
Another valuable source is Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper’s Forgotten
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492 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945, published in 2004, which re-
counts wartime events in Burma, India, and the Malay Peninsula.
One of the best histories of the “Thirty Comrades” is Izumiya Tatsuro’s The Mi-
nami Organ, translated into English by U Tun Aung Chain and published in Ran-
goon in 1985. For those interested in Japanese soldiers’ experiences in the Burma
war, see Kazuo Tamayama and John Nunneley, Tales by Japanese Soldiers. Eric
Lomax’s The Railroad Man is a story of wartime memories and reconciliation
from a former POW who worked on the infamous Thai–Burma Railway.
The standard sources on Burmese Buddhism remain Melford E. Spiro’s Bud-
dhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes, E. Michael
Mendelsohn’s Sangha and State in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianism
and Leadership, and Winston L. King’s A Thousand Lives Away: Buddhism in
Contemporary Burma. But more recent studies on Buddhism include those by
Guy Lubeigt, Hiroko Kawanami, Bruce Matthews, and Juliane Schober. Arti-
cles on nat-worship have been published by Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière and
Sarah Bekker. The history of Christian missionary activity in Burma is also
well documented, for example, Janet Benge and Geoff Benge in Adoniram Jud-
son: Bound for Burma.
Relatively little in dynastic era or modern Burmese literature that has yet to
be translated into English or other Western languages. Maureen Aung-Thwin’s
translation of Ma Ma Lay’s Not out of Hate was published in 1991, but to this
writer’s knowledge there exist no—or at least no readily available—English
translations of Burma’s premier nationalist writer, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
(see Aung San Suu Kyi’s discussion of him in “Literature and Nationalism in
Burma”). Lack of attention to the country’s contemporary literature may re-
flect the poor conditions under which writers and publishers must operate, the
lack of translators outside Burma who could make the best writing available
to a global audience, and perhaps also the intense focus on the part of
Burmese intellectuals on immediate, political issues. Anna J. Allott’s Inked
Over, Ripped Out: Burmese Storytellers and the Censors provides a sample
of recent short stories and a discussion of the heavy state control that writers
must endure.
The country’s sophisticated artistic and architectural heritage is reflected in
such attractively illustrated studies as Sylvia Fraser-Lu’s Burmese Crafts Past
and Present, Alexandra Green and T. Richard Blurton’s Burma: Art and Arche-
ology, Ralph Isaac and T. Richard Blurton’s Visions from the Golden Land:
Burma and the Art of Lacquer, and Pierre Pichard’s monumental, multivolume
Inventory of Monuments at Pagan. Noel Singer’s Old Rangoon: City of the
Shwedagon recalls the city’s precolonial and colonial past, with excellent pho-
tographs. Myanmar Design: Art, Architecture and Design of Burma by John
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 493

Falconer et al. is an attractively packaged introduction to the country’s archi-

tecture, visual arts, and handicrafts. Irene Moilanen and Sergey S. Ozhegov’s
Mirrored in Wood: Burmese Art and Architecture is also recommended.
Finally, a large number of outstanding works on Burma fall in the “Travel
and Description” category: not only the classic The Burman: His Life and No-
tions by J. G. Scott (“Shway Yoe”), first published in the 1880s, but also post-
1988 works, such as Sue Arnold’s A Burmese Legacy: Rediscovering My Fam-
ily, Rory MacLean’s Under the Dragon: Travels in a Betrayed Land, and
Andrew Marshall’s The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the
Empire, all of which provide vivid and sometimes disturbing images of life in
military-ruled Burma.

I. GENERAL

1. Bibliographies and Research Guides

Bečka, Jan. Historical Dictionary of Myanmar. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow
Press, 1995.
Burma: A Study Guide. Edited by Ronald A. Morse, Helen L. Loerke, et al.
Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Asia
Program, 1987.
Burmese Studies in Japan, 1868–1985: Literary Guide and Bibliography.
Edited by the Burma Studies Group. Tokyo: Burma Research Group, Tokyo
University of Foreign Studies, 1985.
Guide to Universities’ Central Library. Rangoon: Union of Myanmar, Ministry
of Education, Dept. of Higher Education, Universities Central Library, 1999.
Herbert, Patricia, M. Burma. World Bibliographical Series 132. Santa Barbara,
Calif.: ABC Clio, 1991.
———. “List of Burmese Pro-Democracy [August–September 1988] Publica-
tions in the British Library.” South-East Asia Library Group Newsletter
34–35 (December 1990): 25–38.
Shulman, Frank Joseph. Burma: An Annotated Bibliographical Guide to Inter-
national Doctoral Dissertation Research on Burma, 1898–1985. Lanham,
Md.: University Press of America, in association with the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, 1986.
Sun Laichen. “Chinese Historical Sources on Burma.” The Journal of Burma
Studies 2 (special issue) (1997).
Tuchrello, William P. “A Survey of Selected Resources for the Study of
Burma.” Crossroads 4, no. 1 (Fall 1988): 128–51.
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494 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

2. Directories, Handbooks, Statistical Abstracts, and Yearbooks

Bunge, Frederica M., ed. Burma: A Country Study. 3rd ed. Area Handbook Se-
ries. Washington, D.C.: The American University, Foreign Area Studies, 1983.
The Far East and Australasia. London: Europa Publications, 1969–.
Hla Tun Aung. Myanmar: The Study of Processes and Patterns. Rangoon: Min-
istry of Education, National Centre for Human Resources Development, 2003.
Human Rights Year Book 1998, Burma. Washington, D.C.: Human Rights Doc-
umentation Unit, National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma;
NCGUB Information Office, 1998.
Scott, James George. Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information. Biblio-
theca Orientalis. London: Daniel O’Connor, 1921; Bangkok: Orchid Press,
1999.
Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. Burma: 1983 Population Census.
Rangoon: Ministry of Home Affairs, 1986.
Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific/Annuaire Statistique pour l’Asie et
le Pacifique. Bangkok: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), 1966–.
Statistical Yearbook 2002. Rangoon: Central Statistical Organization, 2002.

3. Guides
Burma Action Group. Burma: The Alternative Guide. 2nd ed. London: BAG,
1995.
Eliot, Joshua, and Jane Bickersteth. Myanmar (Burma) Handbook. Bath, En-
gland: Footprint Handbooks, 1997.
Globetrotter Travel Map: Myanmar. London: Old Saybrook, 1999. Scale
1:1,700,000.
Martin, Steven, et al. Myanmar (Burma). 8th ed. Footscray, Victoria: Lonely
Planet, 2002.
Saw Myat Yin. Culture Shock! Burma. Singapore: Times Books International,
1994.
———. Cultures of the World: Burma. Singapore: Times Books International,
1990.
Tun Shwe Khine. A Guide to Mahamuni. Rakhine Book Series. Rangoon: U
Hla Sein, 1996

4. Travel and Description

Abbott, Gerry. Inroads into Burma: A Travellers’Anthology. Oxford in Asia Pa-
perbacks. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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———. Back to Mandalay: An Inside View of Burma. Bromley, England: Impact

Books, 1990.
Ainsworth, Leopold. A Merchant Venturer Among the Sea Gypsies: Being a Pi-
oneer’s Account of Life on an Island in the Mergui Archipelago. Bangkok:
White Lotus, 2000.
Allott, Anna J. “Burma.” In The Traveller’s Literary Companion to Southeast
Asia, Edited by Alastair Dingwall. Brighton, England: In Print Publishing,
1994.
Arnold, Sue. A Burmese Legacy: Rediscovering My Family. London: Sceptre,
1995.
Aung Aung Taik. Visions of Shwedagon. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1989.
Boucaud, André. Birmanie: sur la piste des seigneurs de la guerre. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1985.
Boudignon, Françoise. A Letter from Burma. Rangoon: UNICEF, 1984.
Cangi, Ellen Corwin. Faded Splendour, Golden Past: Urban Images of Burma.
Oxford in Asia Paperback. Kuala Lumpur, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Collis, Maurice. Land of the Great Image: Being the Experiences of Friar Man-
rique in Arakan. London: Faber & Faber, 1953.
———. Lords of the Sunset: A Tour in the Shan States. London: Faber & Faber,
1938.
Dhida Saraya. Mandalay: The Capital City, Center of the Universe. Bangkok:
Muang Boran Publishing, 1995.
Everada, Ellis. Burma: Encountering the Land of the Buddhas. Gartmore, Scot-
land: Kiscadale Publications, 1994.
Falconer, John, David Odo, and Mandy Sadan. Burma: Frontier Photographs
1918–1935. Edited by Elizabeth Dell. London: Merrell, 2000.
Grant, Colesworthey. Rough Pencillings of a Rough Trip to Rangoon in 1846.
Bangkok: White Orchid, 1995.
Hall, Fielding H. The Soul of a People. London: Macmillan, 1898.
Ivanoff, Jacques, and Thierry Lejard, in collaboration with Luca Gansser and
Gabriella Gansser. A Journey Through the Mergui Archipelago. Bangkok:
White Lotus, 2002.
Khin Myo Chit, and Paw Oo Thet. Festivals and Flowers of the Twelve
Burmese Seasons. Bangkok: Orchard Press, 2002.
Khoo Thwe, Pascal. From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. New
York: HarperCollins, 2002.
MacLean, Rory. Under the Dragon: Travels in a Betrayed Land. London:
Flamingo, 1999.
Marshall, Andrew. The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the
Empire. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002.
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Mi Mi Khaing. Burmese Family. Bombay, [India]: Longmans Green, 1946.

Mirante, Edith T. Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a
Jungle Revolution. New York: Grove Press, 1993.
O’Connor, Vincent Clarence Scott. The Silken East: A Record of Life and
Travel in Burma. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1904; Bangkok: White Lotus,
1993.
Rajanubhab, Damrong. Journey Through Burma in 1936: A View of Culture,
History and Institutions. Bangkok: River Books, 1991.
Sangermano, Father Vincentius. A Description of the Burmese Empire, Com-
piled Chiefly from Burmese Documents. Translated from the Italian and Latin
by William Tandy, with a preface and note by John Jardine. London: Susil
Gupta, 1966.
Schramm-Evans, Zoe. Dark Ruby: Travels in a Troubled Land. London: Pan-
dora, 2000.
Scott, James G. (Shway Yoe). The Burman, His Life and Notions. London:
Macmillan, 1883; New York: Norton, 1963.
Sell, Julie. Whispers at the Pagoda: Portraits of Modern Burma. Bangkok: Or-
chid Press, 1999.
Shades of Gold and Green: Anecdotes of Colonial Burmah, 1886–1948. New
Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1998.
Strachan, Paul. Mandalay: Travels from the Golden City. Gartmore, Scotland:
Kiscadale Publications, 1994.
Takano, Hideyuki. The Shore Beyond Good and Evil: A Report from Inside
Burma’s Opium Kingdom. Reno, Nev.: Kotan, 2002.
Win Pe et al. Rangoon: Green City of Grace. Rangoon: Yangon City Develop-
ment Committee, 1999.

II. HISTORY

1. General
Cady, John F. The United States and Burma. The American Foreign Policy Li-
brary. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Hall, D. G. E. Burma. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1960.
Renard, Ronald D. “For the Fair Name of Myanmar: They Are Being Blotted
out of Burma’s History.” In Burma: Myanmar in the Twenty-First Century—
Dynamics of Continuity and Change. Edited by John J. Brandon. Bangkok:
Thai Studies Section, Chulalongkorn University, 1997.
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———. “Minorities in Burmese History.” In Ethnic Conflict in Buddhist Soci-

eties. Edited by K. M. de Silva et al. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988.
Seekins, Donald M. The Disorder in Order: The Army-State in Burma Since
1962. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2002.
Taylor, Robert H. The State in Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1987.
Tinker, Hugh. The Union of Burma. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Trager, Frank N. Burma: From Kingdom to Republic. New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, 1966.

2. Prehistory
Ba Maw. “The First Discovery in the Evolution of Anyathian Cultures from a
Single Site in Myanmar.” Myanmar Historical Research Journal 2 (June
1998): 97–105.
———. “Research on the Early Man in Myanmar.” Myanmar Historical Re-
search Journal 1 (1995): 213–20.
Hla Myo Nwe. “Sophisticated Stone Age Imagery at Padahlin.” Myanmar Per-
spectives 5 (December 1996): 55–57.
Houtman, Gustaaf. Human Origins, Myanmafication and “Disciplined”
Burmese Democracy. London: Pekhon University Press, 2000.
Nyunt Han, Win Maung, and Elizabeth Moore. “Prehistoric Grave Goods from
the Chindwin and Samon River Regions.” In Burma: Art and Archeology.
Edited by Alexandra Green and T. Richard Blurton. Chicago: Art Media Re-
sources, 2002.
Than Tun. “Prehistoric Researches in Myanmar.” In Traditions in Current Per-
spective: Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar and Southeast Asian
Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon. Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1996.

3. Dynastic History (1st Millennium to 19th Century CE)

Aung-Thwin, Michael. Myth and History in the Historiography of Early
Burma: Paradigms, Primary Sources, and Prejudices. Singapore: Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies, 1998.
———. Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1985.
Aye Kyaw. “Crimes Against Religion in the Penal Codes of Burma, Thailand
and the Philippines.” Journal of the Siam Society 76 (1988): 217–26.
———. “Religion and Family Law in Burma.” Journal of the Siam Society 80,
no. 2 (1992): 59–65.
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———. “The Sangha Organization in Nineteenth Century Burma and Thai-

land.” Journal of the Siam Society 72 (1984): 166–96.
———. “Status of Women in Family Law in Burma and Indonesia.” Crossroads
4, no. 1 (Fall 1988): 100–20.
Bennett, Paul J. Conference under the Tamarind Tree: Three Essays in Burmese
History. Monograph Series No. 15. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Southeast Asian Studies, 1971.
Charney, Michael W. “The 1598–99 Siege of Pegu and the Expansion of
Arakanese Imperial Power into Lower Burma.” Journal of Asian History 28,
no. 1 (1994): 39–57.
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lationship Between Arakan and Ava (Upper Burma).” Journal of Asian His-
tory 34, no. 1 (2000): 53–68.
———. “Shallow-draft Boats, Guns, and the Aye-ra-wa-ti: Continuity and
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Department of History, University of Rangoon. Glimpses of Glorious Pagan.
Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1986.
Eleven Mon Dhammasat Texts. Translated by Nai Pan Hla and Ryuji Okudaira.
Tokyo: The Center for East Asian Cultural Studies for U[NESCO] (The Toyo
Bunko), 1992.
Fransch, Tilman. “Some Reflections on the Burmese Dhammathat with Special
Reference to the Pagan Period.” In Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar 1.
Edited by U. Gärtner and J. Lorenz. Münster/Hamburg: 1994.
Gutman, Pamela. “The Pyu Maitreyas.” In Traditions in Current Perspective:
Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies
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Harvey, G. E. History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824, the
Beginning of the English Conquest. London: Frank Cass, 1967.
Huxley, Andrew. “Buddhism and Law: The View from Mandalay.” Journal of
the International Association of Buddhist Studies 18, no. 1 (1995): 47–95.
———. “The Importance of the Dhammathats in Burmese Law and Culture.”
The Journal of Burma Studies 1 (1997): 1–17.
———. “The Village Knows Best: Social Organization in an Eighteenth-
Century Burmese Law Code.” Southeast Asia Research 5, no. 1 (March
1997): 21–39.
Koenig, William J. The Burmese Polity, 1752–1819: Politics, Administration,
and Social Organization in the Early Kon-Baung Period. Ann Arbor: Center
for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1990.
Lehman, F. K. “Symposium on Societal Organization in Mainland Southeast
Asia Prior to the Eighteenth Century; Freedom and Bondage in Traditional
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Burma and Thailand (with Discussion).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

15 (September 1984): 233–44, 266–70.
Leider, Jacques P. “Arakan’s Ascent during the Mrauk U Period.” In Recalling
Local Pasts: Autonomous History in Southeast Asia. Edited by Sunait
Chutintaranond and Chris Baker. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books,
2002.
Lieberman, V. “Political Consolidation in Burma Under the Early Konbaung
Dynasty 1752–c. 1820.” Journal of Asian History 30, no. 2 (1996): 152–68.
———. “Provincial Reforms in Taung-ngu Burma.” Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 43, no. 3 (1980): 548–69.
———. “Reinterpreting Burmese History.” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 29 (January 1987): 162–94.
———. “The Transfer of the Burmese Capital from Pegu to Ava.” Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society 1 (1980): 64–83.
Lubeigt, Guy. “Ancient Peninsular Trade Roads and Rivalries over the
Tenasserim Coasts.” In Commerce et Navigation en Asie du Sud-Est, XIVe-
XIXe siècle (Trade and Navigation in Southeast Asia, 14th–19th Centuries).
Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Yoshiaki Ishizawa. Paris: Harmattan, 1999.
———. Pagan (Xe-XILLe Siècles): Capitale d’un Empire Médiéval Indochinois.
Paris: Ed. Kailash, 1997.
———. Pagan, du Passé au Présent: Contribution à la Géographie Historique
d’une Capitale Médiévale Indochinoise. Paris: Ed. Kailash, 1998.
Myint Myint Than, Daw. “Mindon’s Measure Against Bribery and Corruption.”
Historical Research Journal 1, no. 1 (1993–1994): 31–36.
Myo Thant Tyn. “Oo Shwe O: Myanmar Scientist of Konbaung Period.” In Tra-
ditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar
and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon. Rangoon: The
Universities Press, 1996.
Nai Pan Hla. “Old Terracota Votive Tablets and New Theories.” In Traditions
in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar and
Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon. Rangoon: The Uni-
versities Press, 1996.
Okudaira Ryuji. “A Hypothetical Analysis on ‘Theravâda Buddhist State at its
Height’ Under King Badon with Special Reference to Manugye Dhammathat
(1782 Manuscript).” In Traditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the
Conference on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November
1995, Yangon. Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1996.
Rajanubhab, Damrong. Our Wars with the Burmese: Thai-Burmese Conflict,
1539–1767. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001.
Sunait Chutintaranond. “The Image of the Burmese Enemy in Thai Perceptions
and Historical Writings.” Journal of the Siam Society 80, no. 1 (1992): 89–99.
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———. “King Bayinnaung in Thai Perception, Historical Writings and Literary

Works.” In Traditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Conference
on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon.
Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1996.
———. “Leading Port Cities in the Eastern Martaban Bay in the Context of Au-
tonomous History.” In Recalling Local Pasts: Autonomous History in South-
east Asia. Edited by Sunait Chutintaranond and Chris Baker. Chiang Mai,
Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2002.
Sunait Chutintaranond and Than Tun. On Both Sides of the Tenasserim Range:
History of Siamese-Burmese Relations. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies,
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Tamura Katsumi. “Tradition of Urban Cosmology in Burma.” East Asian Cul-
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Than Tun, Dr. “A Bagan Temple’s Main Gate: Is There Any Significance When
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Tun Aung Chain. “The Banya Sein Uprising 1774.” Myanmar Historical Re-
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———. “The Deposition of Kyazwa: A Reconsideration of the Inscriptional Ev-
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2002.
Walker, Andrew. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and
Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China, and Burma. Honolulu:
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4. Colonial and Pacific War Era (19th–20th Centuries CE)

Allen, Lewis. Burma: The Longest War 1941–1945. London: Cassell, 2000.
Allott, Anna J. The End of the First Anglo-Burmese War: The Burmese Chron-
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Aung-Thwin, Michael. “‘The British Pacification’ of Burma: Order without
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Aye Kyaw. Voice of Young Burma. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast
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Ba Maw. Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939–1946. New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968.
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Bayly, Christopher, and Tim Harper. Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia,
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5. Post-Independence Era (1948–1987)

Aung-Thwin, Michael. “1948 and Burma’s Myth of Independence.” In Inde-
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Callahan, Mary P. Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003.
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pore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1987.
Davies, Philip H. J. “Legacies of Secret Service: Renegade SOE and the Karen
Struggle in Burma, 1948–50.” In The Clandestine Cold War in Asia,
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Maung Maung, Dr. Burma and General Ne Win. Rangoon: Religious Affairs
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Mya Maung. “The Burma Road to Poverty: A Socio-Political Analysis.” The
Fletcher Forum 13, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 271–94.
———. “Cultural Value and Economic Change in Burma.” Asian Survey 4, no.
3 (March 1964): 757–64.
Nu, U. Saturday’s Son. Translated by Edward Law-Yone. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1975.
Ono Toru. “The Development of Education in Burma.” East Asian Cultural
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Raja Segaram Arumgam. “Burma: A Political and Economic Background.” In
Southeast Asian Affairs, 1975. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies/
Heinemann Asia, 1975.
———. “Burma: Political Unrest and Economic Stagnation.” In Southeast Asian
Affairs, 1976. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies/Heinemann
Asia, 1976.
Remond Htoo, Saw. “The Massacre of the University Students in Rangoon
1962, July 7.” Unpublished paper presented at the Opening Ceremonies of
the Center for Burma Studies, Northern Illinois University, July 28, 1987.
Sargent, Inge. Twilight Over Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
Selth, Andrew. Death of a Hero: The U Thant Disturbances in Burma, Decem-
ber 1974. Research Paper 49. Brisbane, Australia: Griffith University Centre
for the Study of Australian-Asian Relations, 1989.
Silverstein, Josef. Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977.
———. Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National Unity. New Brunswick,
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———. “The Other Side of Burma’s Struggle for Independence.” Pacific Affairs
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Sola, Richard. Chine-Birmanie: Histoire d’une Guerre Secrète, 1949–1954.

Paris: Sudestasie, 1990.
Steinberg, David I. Burma’s Road toward Development: Growth and Ideology
under Military Rule. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981.
———. “Burma under the Military: Toward a Chronology.” Contemporary
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———. “Burmese Economics: The Conflict of Ideology and Pragmatism.” In
Military Rule in Burma since 1962: A Kaleidoscope of Views. Edited by F. K.
Lehman. Singapore: Maruzen Asia, 1981.
———. “Neither Silver nor Gold: The 40th Anniversary of the Burmese Econ-
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Josef Silverstein. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program,
1989.
Thaung, U. A Journalist, A General and An Army in Burma. Bangkok: White
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Wiant, Jon. “Tradition in the Service of Revolution: The Political Symbolism
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of Views. Edited by F. K. Lehman. Singapore: Maruzen Asia, 1981.

6. The Political Crisis of 1988

Aikman, David. “Armies Rampant.” Time 132 (October 3, 1988): 30–32.
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Lintner, Bertil. Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy. Hong Kong: Re-
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Maung Maung, Dr. The 1988 Uprising in Burma. Monograph 49. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 2000.
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Survey 29, no. 6 (June 1989): 543–58.
Tanabe Hisao. Biruma Minshuka Undo–, 1988: Dokyu– mento [Document:
Burma’s Democracy Movement, 1988]. Tokyo: Nashi no Ki Sha, 1989.

III. CONTEMPORARY BURMA (MYANMAR)

1. Population, Ethnicity, and Languages

Allott, A. J., and John Okell. Burmese (Myanmar) Dictionary of Grammatical
Forms. Richmond, England: Curzon, 2000.
Armstrong, Ruth M. The Kachins of Burma. Bloomington, Ind.: Eastern Press,
1997.
Ba Han, Dr. The University English-Myanmar Dictionary. Rangoon: Win Lit-
erature, 1996.
Bauer, Christian. “Language and Ethnicity: The Mon in Burma and Thailand.”
In Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia.
Edited by Gehan Wijeyewardene. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, 1990.
Chappell, Hilary. “The Benefactive Construction in Moulmein Sgaw Karen.”
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 15, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 11–30.
Dessaint, William, and Alain Dessaint. “Opium and Labor: Social Structure and
Economic Change in the Lisu Highlands.” Peasant Studies 19, nos. 3–4
(Spring–Summer 1992): 147–77.
Dessaint, William, and Avounado Ngwâma. Au Sud des Nuages: Mythes et Con-
tes Recueillis Oralement Chez les Montagnards Lissou (Tibéto-Birmans),
Paris: “L’Aube des Peuples,” Editions Gallimard, 1994.
Evans, Grant, Christopher Hutton, and Khun Eng Kuah. Where China Meets
Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Border Region. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Falla, Jonathan. True Love and Bartholomew; Rebels on the Burmese Border.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Fiskesjö, Nils Magnus Geir. “The Fate of Sacrifice and the Making of Wa His-
tory.” Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Anthropology and Department of East
Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, 2000.
Forbes, Andrew D. W. “History of Panglong, 1875–1900: A ‘Panthay’ (Chinese-
Muslim).” Muslim World (Hartford, Conn.) 78 (January 1988): 38–50.
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Hayami, Yoko. “Karen Tradition According to Christ or Buddha—The Impli-

cations of Multiple Reinterpretations for a Minority Ethnic Group in Thai-
land.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, no. 2 (September 1996): 334ff.
Hayami, Yoko, and Susan M. Darlington. “The Karen of Burma and Thailand.”
In Endangered Peoples of Southeast and East Asia: Struggles to Survive and
Thrive. Edited by Leslie E. Sponsel et al. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
Press, 2000.
Heppner, Kevin. “Manerplaw’s Federal University: An Experiment in Ethnic
Harmony in the Midst of Revolution.” Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 16
(March 1992): 22–26.
Howard, Michael C. Textiles of the Hill Tribes of Burma. Bangkok: White Lo-
tus, 1999.
Kammerer, Cornelia Ann. “Customs and Christian Conversion Among Akha
Highlanders of Burma and Thailand.” American Ethnologist 17 (May 1990):
277–91.
Khai, Chin Khua. “Dynamics of Renewal: A Historical Movement Among the
Zomi in Myanmar.” Ph.D. Thesis, Intercultural Studies, Fuller Theological
Seminary, 1999.
Khin Maung Kyi. “Indians in Burma: Problems of an Alien Subculture in a
Highly Integrated Society.” In Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Sin-
gapore: Times Academic Press, 1993.
Khin Maung, M. Ismael. Estimates of Burma’s Mortality, Age Structure, and
Fertility, 1973–83. Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Population Institute, East-
West Center, 1990.
Lintner, Bertil. The Kachin: Lords of Burma’s Northern Frontier. Peoples and
Cultures of Southeast Asia. Thailand: Teak House, 1997.
———. Land of Jade. Edinburgh: Kiscadale Publications, 1990.
Moe K. Tun. Education for the Development of the Marginalized Karen in
Burma. Bangkok: Burma Issues, 1998.
Mya Than. “Jairampur: A Profile of an Indian Community in Rural Burma.” In
Indian Communities in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Times Academic Press,
1993.
Nai Pan Hla. The Significant Role of the Mon Language and Culture in South-
east Asia. Part I. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for
the Study of the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1992.
Peltier, Anatole-Roger. “Régards sur la Litterature Classique Khun de Birmanie.”
Bulletin De L’Ecole Française D’Extrême-Orient 87 (2000): 193–214.
Rajah, Ananda. “Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Nation-State: The Karen in
Burma and Thailand.” In Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in
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Rastorfer, Jean-Marc. On the Development of Kayah and Kayan National Iden-

tity: A Study and A Bibliography. Bangkok: Southeast Asian Publishing
House, 1994.
Sakhong, Lian H. In Search of Chin Identity: A Study in Religion, Politics and
Ethnic Identity in Burma. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Se-
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———. Religion and Politics Among the Chin People in Burma (1896–1949).
Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 2000.
South, Ashley. Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Shel-
drake. London: Routledge-Curzon, 2003.
Tooker, Deborah E. “Identity Systems of Highland Burma: Belief, Akha zan,
and a Critique of Interiorized Notions of Ethno-Religious Identity.” Man 27
(December 1992): 799–819.
Van Bik, Rolling. “The Chin National Front and Chin Nationhood.” Burma De-
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Wijeyewardene, Gehan. “Ethnicity Policy in Burma.” Thai-Yunnan Project
Newsletter 14 (September 1991): 17.

2. Economics and Economic Engagement

Aditjondro, George. “Dictators United: The Suharto-SLORC Business Con-
nection.” Multinational Monitor 18 (1997): 11–14.
Badgley, John. “The Burmese Way to Capitalism.” In Southeast Asian Affairs
1990. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990.
Brunner, Jake. Logging Burma’s Frontier Forests: Resources and the Regime.
Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 1999.
“Burma: Gas Exports—and Endless Problems Asia’s Latest Gas Contender is Sti-
fled by Its Military, Corruption and the Limited Opportunities Offered by Thai-
land Energy Economist.” Thailand Energy Economist 226 (2000): 16–19.
Buszynski L. “Thailand and Myanmar—The Perils of Constructive Engage-
ment.” Pacific Review 11, no. 2 (1998): 290–305.
Capital Flows Along the Mekong: The Complete Guide to Investing in Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar & Vietnam. 2 vols. Hong Kong: Asia Law & Practice, 1996.
Carter, George Francis. “Rice Shortage to Hit Home.” Far Eastern Economic
Review 136 (April 16 1987): 76.
Cook, Paul. “Myanmar: Experience with Aid and Management Development
during Transition.” Public Administration and Development 13, no. 4 (Octo-
ber 1993): 423–34.
———. “Policy Reform, Privatization, and Private Sector Development in
Myanmar.” South East Asia Research (SOAS, London University) 2, no. 2
(September 1994): 117–40.
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Cook, Paul and Martin Minogue. “Economic Reform and Political Change in
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Country Profile. London: The Economist Intelligence Unit (annual publica-
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Fujisaka, Sam, Keith Moody, and Keith Ingram. “A Descriptive Study of Farm-
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Hirouchi, Kaori. “Japan’s Official Foreign Aid to Burma: Contradiction and
Motivation.” Master’s Thesis, Clark University, 1998.
Hobson, J. S. Perry, and Roberta Leung. “Hotel Development in Myanmar: Pol-
itics and the Human-Resources Challenge.” The Cornell Hotel and Restau-
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Indochina and Myanmar.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 14, no. 4 (March
1993): 332–51.
Kanayama, Hisahiro. Expectations and Reality: The Economic & Political
Transition of Vietnam & Myanmar. Tokyo: Institute for International Policy
Studies, 1995.
Kane, Robert E., and Robert C. Kammerling. “Status of Ruby and Sapphire Min-
ing in the Mogok Stone Tract.” Gems & Gemology 27 (Fall 1992): 152–74.
Khin Maung Nyunt. Foreign Loans and Aid in the Economic Development of
Burma 1974/75 to 1985/86. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Printing
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Kiryu Minoru, ed. ASEAN and Japanese Perspectives on Industrial Develop-
ment and Reforms in Myanmar: A Survey of Selected Firms. Bangkok: Chu-
lalongkorn University Printing House, 1998.
———. Industrial Development and Reforms in Myanmar: ASEAN and Japan-
ese Perspectives. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999.
———. “Performance and Prospects of the Myanmar Economy.” In Southeast
Asian Affairs 1992. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992.
McCarthy, Stephen. “Ten Years of Chaos in Burma: Foreign Investment and
Economic Liberalization Under the SLORC-SPDC, 1988 to 1998.” Pacific
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Mya Maung. “The Burma Road from the Union of Burma to Myanmar.” Asian
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———. The Burma Road to Poverty. New York: Praeger, 1991.

Mya Than. “Agriculture in Myanmar: What Has Happened to Asia’s Rice
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———. “Economic Co-operation in the Greater Mekong Subregion.” Asian-
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———. “Little Change in Rural Burma: A Case Study of a Burmese Village
(1960–80).” Sojourn 2, no. 1 (February 1987): 55–88.
———. Myanmar’s External Trade: An Overview in the Southeast Asian Con-
text. ISEAS Current Economic Affairs Series. Singapore: Institute of South-
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Mya Than and Joseph L. H. Tan, eds. Myanmar Dilemmas and Options. Sin-
gapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990.
Mya Than, Myat Thein, and Maw Than. Financial Resources for Development
in Myanmar: Lessons from Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, 2000.
Myat Mon. “The Economic Position of Women in Burma.” Asian Studies Re-
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Myat Thein. “The Economics of Farm Size and Land Policy in the Transition
to a Market Economy.” Sojourn 12 (April 1997): 124–34.
———. Improving Domestic Resource Mobilization in Myanmar. Singapore: In-
stitute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999.
Myat Thein and Maung Maung Soe. “Economic Reforms and Their Impact on
Agricultural Development in Myanmar.” ASEAN Economic Bulletin 15, no.
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———. “Japanese Economic Assistance to Burma: Aid in the ‘Tarenagashi’

Manner?” Crossroads 5, no. 2 (1990): 51–107.
———. “Liberalization in Myanmar: How Real Are the Changes?” Contempo-
rary Southeast Asia 15, no. 2 (September 1993): 161–78.
Talib, Azizah. “Monetary Policy in Myanmar: An Update (1979–1990).” In
Monetary Policy in the SEACEN Countries: An Update. Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia: The South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN), 1993.
Walker, Andrew. “The Myanmar Trade Fair: Tachilek 21–31 December 1993.”
Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 24 (March 1994): 8–9.
Wijeyewardene, Gehan. “Traders of Jade, Traders of Rice: The Anguish of the
DAB.” Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 24 (March 1994): 1–4.
Wong, John. “Why Has Myanmar Not Developed Like East Asia?” ASEAN
Economic Bulletin 13, no. 3 (March 1997): 344–58.
Yao Jianguo. “Sino-Myanmar Trade Develops Apace.” Beijing Review 34 (Au-
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Young, Kenneth B. An Economic Assessment of the Myanmar Rice Sector:
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Allott, Anna J. “The Media in Burma and the Pro-Democracy Movement of
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Aung Hla. “Using the Internet in the Cyberwar Between Burma Activists and
the Military Government of Burma 1998.” Master’s Thesis, University of
Maryland, College Park, 1998.
Aung San Suu Kyi. Freedom from Fear and Other Writings. Rev. ed. Edited by
Michael Aris. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
———. “In Her Own Words: Interview with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.” Burma
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———. Letters from Burma. New York: Penguin, 1997.
———. “An Opening Keynote Address: The NGO Forum on Women Beijing
1995, 31 August 1995.” Burma Debate 11, no. 4 (August/September 1995):
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Bečka, Jan. “The Military and the Struggle for Democracy in Burma: The Pre-
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D.C.: Library of Congress Office; Library of Congress Photoduplication Ser-
vice, 1998.
Diller, Janelle M. “Constitutional Reform in a Repressive State: The Case of
Burma.” Asian Survey 33 (April 1993): 393–407.
“Extracts from a Personal Statement by Khon Mar Ko Pan Regarding the
SLORC’s National Convention.” Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 21 (June
1993): 10–12.
Fink, Christina. Living Silence: Burma under the Military Rule. New York:
Zed, 2001.
Ghosh, Amitav. “Burma (Aung San and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi).” The New
Yorker 72 (August 12, 1996): 38–54.
Gravers, Mikael. Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma. An Essay on the
Historical Practice of Power. 2nd rev. ed. London: NIAS-Curzon, 1998.
Guyot, James. “Burma.” In Rethinking Political Development in Southeast
Asia. Edited by Norma Mahmood. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: University of
Malaya Press, 1994.
———. “Myanmar in 1989: Tatmadaw V.” Asian Survey 30, no. 2 (February
1990): 187–95.
———. “Myanmar in 1990: The Unconsummated Election.” Asian Survey 31,
no. 2 (February 1991): 205–11.
Guyot, James F., and John Badgley. “Burma in 1988: Perestroika with a Mili-
tary Face.” In Southeast Asian Affairs 1989. Singapore: Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, 1989.
Haseman, John B. “Burma in 1987: Change in the Air?” Asian Survey (Febru-
ary 1988).
———. Destruction of Democracy: The Tragic Case of Burma. New York:
Asian Affairs, 1993.
———. “Turmoil in Burma: There Came a Whirlwind.” Asian Defence Journal
(August 1989).
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Heppner, Kevin. “Manerplaw’s Federal University: An Experiment in Ethnic

Harmony in the Midst of Revolution.” Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 16
(March 1992): 22–26.
Herbert, Patricia. “List of Burmese Pro-Democracy [August–September
1988] Publications in the British Library.” South-East Asia Library Group
Newsletter 34–35 (December 1990): 25–38.
Hoffmann, Ralf. “Traditional Political Culture and the Prospects for Democ-
racy in Burma.” In Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar 3–2. Edited by U.
Gärtner and J. Lorenz. Münster/Hamburg, 1994.
Houtman, Gustaaf. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu
Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Monograph Series 33. Tokyo:
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages
and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999.
International IDEA. Challenges to Democratization in Burma: Perspectives
on Multi-lateral and Bilateral Perspectives. Stockholm: Institute for De-
mocracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), 2001.
Leehey, Jennifer. “Message in a Bottle: A Gallery of Social/Political Cartoons
from Burma.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 25, no. 1 (1997):
151–55.
Lin Xixing. “Burma’s Political Situation before the General Election.” Thai-
Yunnan Project Newsletter 10 (September 1990): 14–17.
Lintner, Bertil. Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Unfinished Renaissance.
Clayton, Australia: Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University,
1990.
———. Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1994.
Matthews, Bruce. “Buddhism Under a Military Regime: The Iron Heel in
Burma.” Asian Survey 33 (April 1993): 408–23.
———. “The Present Fortune of Tradition-Bound Authoritarianism in Myan-
mar.” Pacific Affairs 71, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 7–23.
May, Ronald James, Emily Rudland, and Morten B. Pedersen. Burma-Myanmar:
Strong Regime, Weak State? Adelaide, Australia: Crawford House Publishing,
2000.
Mya Maung. Totalitarianism in Burma: Prospects for Economic Develop-
ment. New York: Paragon House, 1992.
Politics and Government in Burma. Parts 1 & 2. New Delhi; Washington,
D.C.: Library of Congress Office; Library of Congress Photoduplication
Service, 1999.
Rotberg, Robert I., ed. Burma: Prospects for a Democratic Future. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The World Peace Foundation and Harvard Institute for In-
ternational Development/Brookings Institute Press, 1998.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 517

Seekins, Donald M. “Burma in 1998: Little to Celebrate.” Asian Survey 39,

no. 1 (January/February 1999): 12.
———. “Burma in 1999: A Slim Hope.” Asian Survey 40, no. 1 (Jan./February
2000): 16–24.
———. Myanmar: Secret Talks and Political Paralysis.” In Southeast Asian Af-
fairs 2002. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002.
Sein Win. “Sustaining Burma’s Hopes for Freedom.” Journal of Democracy 5
(April 1994): 144–49.
Siemers, Gunter. “Myanmar 1992: Heading for A Guided Democracy.” In
Southeast Asian Affairs 1993. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Stud-
ies, 1993.
Silverstein, Josef. “Aung San Suu Kyi: Is She Burma’s Woman of Destiny?”
Asian Survey 30, no. 10 (October 1990): 1007–19.
———. “Burma’s Uneven Struggle.” Journal of Democracy 7 (October 1996):
88–102.
———. “Change in Burma?” Current History 94 (December 1995): 440–43.
———. “Civil War and Rebellion in Burma.” Asian Survey 21, no. 1 (March
1990): 114–34.
———. “The Idea of Freedom in Burma and the Political Thought of Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi.” Pacific Affairs 69 (Summer 1996): 211–28.
———. Two Papers on Burma. Department of Social Change Research School
of Pacific and Asian Studies. Canberra: Australian National University,
1996.
Skyful of Lies, B.B.C., V.O.A.: Their Broadcasts and Rebuttals to Disinforma-
tion. Rangoon: The News and Periodicals Enterprise, 1988.
Smith, Martin. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. Rev. and up-
dated ed. London: Zed Books, 1999.
Sola, Richard. Birmanie: La Révolution Kidnappée (1981–1995). Paris: L’Har-
mattan, 1996.
Steinberg, David I. Burma: Prospects for Political and Economic Reconstruc-
tion. Cambridge, Mass.: World Peace Foundation, 1997.
———. “Burma/Myanmar: Under the Military” In Driven by Growth: Political
Change in the Asia-Pacific Region. Rev. ed. Singapore: Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, 1999.
———. Burma, the State of Myanmar. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univer-
sity Press, 2000.
———. “Crisis in Burma.” Current History 88 (April 1989): 185–88.
———. “Myanmar in 1991: The Miasma in Burma (Part of a Symposium on
Asia in 1991).” Asian Survey 32 (February 1992): 146–53.
———. “Myanmar 1991: Military Intransigence.” In Southeast Asian Affairs
1992. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992.
06-205 (09) Biblio.qxd 7/13/06 7:52 AM Page 518

518 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sundhaussen, Ulf. “Indonesia’s New Order: A Model for Myanmar?” Asian

Survey 35, no. 8 (August 1995): 768–80.
Taylor, Robert H, ed. Burma: Political Economy under Military Rule. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
———. “Change in Burma: Political Demands and Military Power.” Asian Af-
fairs 22 (June 1991): 131–41.
———. “The Evolving Military Role in Burma.” Current History 89 (March
1990): 105–8.
Ten Years on: A Parliament Denied: Burma’s Struggle to Convene the People’s
Parliament. Bangkok: Alternative A[SEAN] Network on Burma, 2000.
Thawnghmung, Ardeth Maung. Behind the Teak Curtain: Authoritarianism,
Agricultural Policies and Political Legitimacy in Rural Burma/Myanmar.
London: Kegan Paul, 2004.
Thomson, Curtis N. “Political Stability and Minority Groups in Burma.” Ge-
ographical Review 85 (July 1995): 269–85.
Tin Maung Maung Than. “Myanmar Democratization: Punctuated Equilib-
rium or Retrograde Motion?” In Democratization in Southeast and East
Asia. Edited by Anek Laothamatas. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm
Books, 1997.
———. “Neither Inheritance nor Legacy: Leading the Myanmar State since In-
dependence.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 15, no. 1 (June 1993): 24–63.
To Stand and Be Counted: The Suppression of Burma’s Members of Parlia-
ment. Bangkok: All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, Documentation and
Research Centre, 1998.
Tortured Voices: Personal Accounts of Burma’s Interrogation Centres.
Bangkok: All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, 1998.
Web of Conspiracy Complicated Stories of Treacherous Machinations and In-
trigues of BCP UG, DAB, and Some NLD Leaders to Seize State Power.
Rangoon: The News and Periodicals Enterprise, 1991.
Weller, Marc., ed. Democracy and Politics in Burma: A Collection of Docu-
ments. Manerplaw, Burma: G.P.O. of the National Coalition Government of
the Union of Burma, 1993.
Wijeyewardene, Gehan. “The Defeat of Khun Sa.” Thai-Yunnan Project
Newsletter 32 (June 1996): 3–5.
Yawnghwe, Chao-Tzang. “The Orientalization of Burmese Politics? A Re-
search Agenda.” Burma Debate VII, nos. 1 & 2 (Fall 2000): 10–13.
———. “The Political Economy of the Opium Trade: Implications for Shan
State.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 23, no. 3 (1993): 306–26.
———. “The Politics of Authoritarianism: The State and Political Soldiers in
Burma, Indonesia, and Thailand.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of British Co-
lumbia, 1997.
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4. Foreign Relations and Security-Military Affairs

Ball, Desmond. Burma and Drugs: The Regime’s Complicity in the Global
Drug Trade. Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian Na-
tional University, 1999.
———. Burma’s Military Secrets: Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) from the Sec-
ond World War to Civil War and Cyber Warfare. Bangkok: White Lotus,
1998.
Bert, Wayne. “Chinese Policy toward Democratization Movements: Burma and
the Philippines.” Asian Survey 30, no. 11 (November 1990): 1066–83.
Buszynski L. “Thailand and Myanmar—The Perils of Constructive Engage-
ment.” Pacific Review 11, no. 2 (1998): 290–305.
Groves, Tim. “‘Burma’ Joins Japan’s Newspeak Blacklist.” Kyoto Journal 29
(1995): 136–39.
Guay, Terence. “Local Government and Global Politics: The Implications of
Massachusetts’ ‘Burma Law’.” Political Science Quarterly 115, no. 3 (Fall
2000): 353–76.
Liang, Chi Shad. Burma’s Foreign Relations: Neutralism in Theory and Prac-
tice. New York: Praeger, 1990.
Lu, Yun. “Ruili: China’s Southwestern Gate to Burma.” Beijing Review 30
(May 25, 1987): 22–24.
Malik, J. Mohan. “Sino-Indian Rivalry in Myanmar: Implications for Regional
Security.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 16, no. 2 (September 1994):
137–56.
Maung Aung Myoe. Building the Tatmadaw: The Organisational Development
of the Armed Forces in Myanmar, 1948–98. Canberra: Strategic and Defence
Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1998.
———. Officer Education and Leadership Training in the Tatmadaw: A Survey.
Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National Uni-
versity, 2000.
———. Neither Friend nor Foe: Myanmar’s Relations with Thailand since
1988: A View from Yangon. IDSS Monograph 1. Singapore: Institute of De-
fence and Strategic Studies, 2002.
Ott, Marvin C. Burma: A Strategic Perspective. Washington, D.C.: National
Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1996.
Overholt, William H. “Dateline Drug Wars: Burma: The Wrong Enemy.” For-
eign Policy 77 (winter 1989/1990): 172–91.
Pradhan, Swatanter, K. New Dimensions in Indo-Burmese Relations. New
Delhi: Rajat, 2000.
Saito, Teruko. “Japan’s Inconsistent Approach to Burma.” Japan Quarterly 39
(January/March 1992): 17–27.
06-205 (09) Biblio.qxd 7/13/06 7:52 AM Page 520

520 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Seekins, Donald M. “Burma-China Relations: Playing with Fire.” Asian Survey

37, no. 6 (June 1997): 525–39.
———. “Japan’s Aid Relations with Military Regimes in Burma, 1962–1991:
The Kokunaika Process.” Asian Survey 32, no. 3 (March 1992): 246–62.
———. “The North Wind and the Sun: Japan’s Response to the Political Crisis
in Burma, 1988–1996.” Journal of Burma Studies 4 (1999): 1–33.
Selth, Andrew. Burma’s Armed Forces: Power without Glory. Norwalk: East-
bridge, 2002.
Singh, S. “The Sinicization of Myanmar and Its Implications for India.” Issues
and Studies 33, no. 1 (January 1997): 116–33.
Steinberg, David I. “Burma/Myanmar and the Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Pol-
icy.” Contemporary Southeast Asia 21, no. 2 (August 1999): 283–311.
———. “Japanese Economic Assistance to Burma: Aid in the ‘Tarenagashi’
Manner?” Crossroads 5, no. 2 (1990): 51–107.
Tin Maung Maung Than. “Burma’s National Security and Defence Posture.”
Contemporary Southeast Asia 11, no. 1 (June 1989): 40–60.

5. Human Rights
Allott, Anna J. Inked Over, Ripped Out: Burmese Storytellers and the Censors.
New York: Pen American Center, 1993.
Amnesty International. Myanmar—Exodus from the Shan State. London: Inter-
national Secretariat, 2000.
Apple, Betsy. School for Rape. Bangkok: EarthRights International, 1998.
Bamforth, Vicky, Steven Lanuouwand Graham Mortimer. Conflict and Dis-
placement in Karenni: The Need for Considered Approaches. Chiang Mai,
Thailand: Burma Ethnic Research Group, 2000.
Bangladesh/Burma: Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, The Search for a Last-
ing Solution. New York: Human Rights Watch/Asia, 1997.
Burma: Children’s Rights and the Rule of Law. New York: Human Rights
Watch, 1998.
Burma, Entrenchment or Reform: Human Rights Developments and the Need
for Continued Pressure. New York: Human Rights Watch/Asia, 1995.
Burma: Extrajudicial Execution, Torture and Political Imprisonment of Members
of the Shan and Other Ethnic Minorities. London: Amnesty International, 1988.
Burma: Human Lives for Natural Resources, Oil & Natural Gas. Chiang Mai,
Thailand: The Southeast Asian Information Network and the All Burma Stu-
dents’ Democratic Front, Chiang Mai University, 1994.
Burma: Human Rights, Foreign Trade, Aid and Investments. Brussels, Belgium:
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), Department of
Free Trade Union Rights, 1994.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • 521

Burma/Bangladesh: Burmese Refugees in Bangladesh: Still No Durable Solu-

tion. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000.
Burma/Thailand: Unwanted and Unprotected: Burmese Refugees in Thailand.
London: Human Rights Watch, 1998.
Dispossessed: Forced Relocation and Extrajudicial Killings in Shan State. Chi-
ang Mai, Thailand: The Shan Human Rights Foundation, 1998.
Forgotten Victims of a Hidden War: Internally Displaced Karen in Burma.
Bangkok: Burma Ethnic Research Group and the Friedrich Naumann Foun-
dation (BERG), 1998.
Human Rights Violations Relevant to the 1998 United Nations Commission on
Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland. Bangkok: Altsean Burma, 1998.
IMAGES/ASIA in collaboration with ALTSEAN-BURMA. Report on the Sit-
uation for Muslims in Burma. Bangkok: Forma Asia, 1997.
International Labour Organisation. Forced Labour in Myanmar (Burma): Re-
port of the Commission of Inquiry Appointed under Article 26 of the Consti-
tution of the International Labour Organisation to Examine the Observance
by Myanmar of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930. Geneva: ILO, 1998.
Iyer, Venkat. Acts of Oppression: Censorship and the Law in Burma. London:
Article 19, 1999.
Lang, Hazel. Fear and Sanctuary: Burmese Refugees in Thailand. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 2002.
Lewa, Chris. All Quiet on the Western Front?: The Situation in Chin State and
Sagaing Division, Burma. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Images Asia, 1998.
Life in the Country: Continued Human Rights Violations in Burma (Special
Emphasis on Far Southern and South-Eastern Regions: Tenasserim Division
and Mon State). Bangkok: Mon Information Service, 1997.
A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into
Brothels in Thailand. New York: Asia Watch and The Women’s Rights Pro-
ject, Human Rights Watch, 1993.
Myanmar: The Climate of Fear Continues, Members of Ethnic Minorities and Po-
litical Prisoners Still Targeted. New York: Amnesty International U.S., 1993.
Myanmar: Conditions in Prisons and Labour Camps. London: Amnesty Inter-
national, 1995.
Myanmar: Ethnic Minority Rights under Attack. London: Amnesty Interna-
tional, 1997.
Myanmar: “In the National Interest”: Prisoners of Conscience, Torture, Sum-
mary Trials Under Martial Law. London: Amnesty International, 1990.
Myanmar: The Kayin (Karen) State Militarization and Human Rights. London:
Amnesty International, 1999.
Myanmar—“No Law at All”: Human Rights Violations under Military Rule.
New York: Amnesty International, 1992.
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522 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Myanmar: Update on the Shan State. London: International Secretariat, 1999.

Myanmar (Burma): Continuing Killings and Ill-Treatment of Minority Peoples.
London: Amnesty International, 1991.
People’s Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma. Voice of the
Hungry Nation. Hong Kong: Asian Human Rights Commission, 1999.
Shan Human Rights Foundation. Uprooting the Shan. Chiang Mai, Thailand:
SHRF, 1996.
To Stand and Be Counted: The Suppression of Burma’s Members of Parliament.
Bangkok: All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, Documentation and Re-
search Centre, 1998.
Tortured Voices: Personal Accounts of Burma’s Interrogation Centres.
Bangkok: All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, 1998.
Venkateswaran, K. S. Burma, Beyond the Law. London: Article 19, 1996.

6. Social and Public Health Issues

Ba-Thike, Katherine. “Abortion: A Public Health Problem in Myanmar.” Re-
productive Health Matters (May 9, 1997): 94–100.
Beyrer, Chris. “The Health and Humanitarian Situation of Burmese Popula-
tions along the Thai-Burma Border.” Burma Debate 6, no. 3 (Fall 1999):
4–13.
———. War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia. Bangkok:
White Lotus; London: Zed Books, 1998.
Dessaint, William, and Alain Dessaint. “Opium and Labor: Social Structure and
Economic Change in the Lisu Highlands.” Peasant Studies 19, nos. 3–4
(Spring–Summer 1992): 147–77.
Drug Control: U.S. Supported Efforts in Burma, Pakistan, and Thailand. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Report to Congress 1988.
Evans, Kiri. Cost Effectiveness of Primary Education in Myanmar. Rangoon:
UNICEF, 1994.
Khin Maung Naing, Cho Nwe Oo, and Tin Tin Oo. “A Study on the Aetiology
of Endemic Goitre in Lowland Burma.” European Journal of Clinical Nutri-
tion 43 (October 1989): 693–98.
Muller, H. J. “Women in Urban Burma-Social Issues and Political Dilemmas.”
Women’s-Studies-International-Forum 17, no. 7 (November/December 1994):
609–20.
Naing Oo. “Urbanization and Economic Development in Burma.” Sojourn 4,
no. 2 (August 1989): 233–60.
Out of Control 2: The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Burma: A Report on the Current
Status of the HIV/AIDS and Heroin Epidemics, Policy Options and Policy
Implications. Thailand: Southeast Asian Information Network, 1998.
06-205 (09) Biblio.qxd 7/13/06 7:52 AM Page 523

BIBLIOGRAPHY • 523

Renard, Ronald D. The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of
the Golden Triangle. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996.
Report of the Preliminary Joint Survey Team on Opium Production and Con-
sumption in the Union of Burma.” Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 22 (Sep-
tember 1993): 20–23.
The Role of NGOs in Burma. Milton Keynes, England: World Vision, 1995.
A Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Myanmar. Rangoon: United
Nations Children’s Fund, 1990.
Swan, June Angela “Utilization of Mental Health Services Among Myanmar
Americans.” Ph.D. Dissertation, California School of Professional Psychol-
ogy, Los Angeles, 1993.
Tin May Than and Ba Aye. “Energy Intake and Energy Output of Burmese
Farmers at Different Seasons.” Human Nutrition 39c (January 1985): 7–15.
Women’s Report Card on Burma. Bangkok: Alternative A[SEAN] Network on
Burma, 2000.

7. Religion, Religion in Society

Barden, Stanley. The Golden Rock of Kyaik-Tiyo. Cornwall, England: United
Writers, 1997.
Bates, Alice Buhl. For All Time: The Story of Ann Judson. Birmingham, Ala.:
New Hope, 1998.
Bekker, Sarah M. “Transformation of the Nats: The Humanization Process in
the Depiction of the Thirty-Seven Lords of Burma.” Crossroads 4, no. 1 (Fall
1988): 40–45.
Benge, Janet, and Geoff Benge. Adoniram Judson: Bound for Burma. Seattle:
YWAM, 2000.
Brac de la Perrière, Bénédicte. “The Burmese Nats: Between Sovereignty and
Autochthony.” Diogenes (International Council for Philosophy and Human-
istic Studies) 174 (1996): 45–60.
———. “‘Etre épousée par un Naq’: Les Implications du Mariage avec l’Esprit
dans le Culte de Possession Birman (Myanmar).” Anthropologie et Sociétes
22, no. 2.
———. “Musique et Possession Dans le Culte des Trente Sept Naq Birmans.”
Cahiers de Litérature Orale 35 (1994): 177–88.
Dowling, Nancy H. “Burmese Lokapalas: A Problem of Identification.” Jour-
nal of the Siam Society 70 (1982): 86–99.
Fransch, Tilman. “A Buddhist Network in the Bay of Bengal: Relations Be-
tween Bodhgaya, Burma and Sri Lanka, ca. 300–1399.” In From the
Mediterranean to the China Sea: Miscellaneous Notes. Edited by Glaude
Guillot et al. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1998.
06-205 (09) Biblio.qxd 7/13/06 7:52 AM Page 524

524 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. “An Eminent Buddhist Tradition: The Myanmar Vinayadharas.” In Tra-

ditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Conference on Myanmar
and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon. Rangoon: The
Universities Press, 1996.
———. “Some Reflections on the Burmese Dhammathat with Special Refer-
ence to the Pagan Period.” In Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar 1. Edited
by U. Gärtner and J. Lorenz. Münster/Hamburg, 1994.
Gatellier, Marie. “Les images du Temple Phaung Daw U sur le lac Inlé en
Union de Myanmar (Birmanie).” In Péninsule Indochinoise (collectif): Notes
sur la Religion et la Culture dans la Péninsule Indochinoise. Paris: L’Har-
mattan, 1994.
Hayami, Yoko. “Karen Tradition According to Christ or Buddha—The Impli-
cations of Multiple Reinterpretations for a Minority Ethnic Group in Thai-
land.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, no. 2 (September 1996): 334ff.
Houtman, Gustaaf. “The Biography of Modern Burmese Buddhist Meditation
Master U Ba Khin: Life before the Cradle and Past the Grave.” In Sacred Bi-
ography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by
Juliane Schober. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.
Jordt, Ingrid. “Bhikkhuni, Thilashin, Mae-chii: Women Who Renounce the
World in Burma, Thailand, and the Classical Pali Buddhist Texts.” Cross-
roads 4, 1 (1988): 31–39.
Kammerer, Cornelia Ann. “Customs and Christian Conversion Among Akha
Highlanders of Burma and Thailand.” American Ethnologist 17 (May 1990):
277–91.
Kawanami, Hiroko. “Buddhist Nuns in Transition: The Case of Burmese Thila-
Shin.” In Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti. Edited by P.
Connolly and S. Hamilton. London: Luzac Oriental, 1997.
———. “Jyosei to Bukkyo Shugyo [Women and Buddhist Practice].” In
Myanma: Shinko, Matsuri, Seikatsu [Myanmar, Belief System, Festivals and
Life]. Edited by R. Okudaira. Tokyo: Bijitsu, 1977.
———.“Women in Buddhism Revisited.” In Women, Power and Resistance.
Edited by T. Cosslett et al. Buckingham, England: Open University Press,
1997.
King, Winston L. A Thousand Lives Away: Buddhism in Contemporary Burma.
Berkeley, Calif.: Asian Humanities Press, 1989.
Ling, Samuel Ngun. The Meeting of Christianity and Buddhism in Burma: Its
Past, Present, and Future Perspectives. Tokyo: International Christian Uni-
versity, 1998.
Lubeigt, Guy. “Dana: From the Religious Concept to its Practical Manifesta-
tions in the Burmese Buddhist Environment ⫽ Dana: du Concept Religieux
à ses Manifestation Pratiques en Milieu Bouddhique Birman.” Social Com-
pass 40, no. 2 (June 1993): 233–59.
06-205 (09) Biblio.qxd 7/13/06 7:52 AM Page 525

BIBLIOGRAPHY • 525

Nu, U. “Nats.” Crossroads 4, no. 1 (Fall 1988): 1–12.

Ray, Niharranjan. Brahmanical Gods in Burma: A Chapter of Indian Art and
Iconography. Singapore: Myanmar Rare Book Publications, 1998.
Sarkisyanz, E. Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1965.
Schendel, Jörg. “Christian Missionaries in Upper Burma, 1853–85.” South East
Asia Research 7, no. 1 (March 1999): 61–91.
Schober, Juliane. “Buddhist Just Rule and Burmese National Culture: State Pa-
tronage of the Chinese Tooth Relic in Myanmar.” History of Religions 36
(February 1996): 218–43.
———. “In the Presence of the Buddha: Ritual Veneration of the Burmese Ma-
hamuni Image.” In Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and
Southeast Asia. Edited by Juliane Schober. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1997.
———. “The Path to Buddhahood: The Spiritual Mission and Social Organiza-
tion of Mysticism in Contemporary Burma.” Crossroads 4, no. 1 (fall 1988):
13–30.
Shwedagon Zedi All-Round Perpetual Renovation Committee. Historic Record
of the Hoisting of the Gold Umbrella on the Shwedagon Pagoda. Rangoon:
Shwedagon Board of Trustees Office, 1999.
Spiro, Melford E. Burmese Supernaturalism. Expanded ed. New Brunswick,
N.J.: Transaction, 1996.
Strong, John S. The Legend and Cult of Upagupta. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1991.
———. Relics of the Buddha. Buddhisms: A Princeton University Press Series.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Temple, Richard Carnac. The Thirty-Seven Nats: a Phase of Spirit-Worship Pre-
vailing in Burma. Arran-Edinburgh, Scotland: Kiscadale Publications, 1992.
Tin Maung Maung Than. “The Sangha and Sasana in Socialist Burma.” So-
journ 3, no. 1 (February 1988): 26–61.
Tooker, Deborah E. “Identity Systems of Highland Burma: ‘Belief’, Akha zan,
and a Critique of Interiorized Notions of Ethno-Religious Identity.” Man 27
(December 1992): 799–819.

IV. CULTURAL EXPRESSION

1. Literature
Allott, Anna J. “Burma.” In The Traveller’s Literary Companion to Southeast
Asia. Edited by Alastair Dingwall. Brighton, England: In Print Publishing,
1994.
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526 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. “Half a Century of Publishing in Mandalay.” The Journal of Burma

Studies 1 (1997): 83–106.
———. “The Study of Burmese Literature.” In Southeast Asian Languages and
Literatures: A Bibliographical Guide to Burmese, Cambodia, Indonesian,
Javanese, Malay, Minangkabau, Thai and Vietnamese. Edited by E. Ulrich
Kratz. New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996.
Bechert, Heinz. Burmese Manuscripts. 3 vols. Wiesbaden, Germany: Steiner,
1978–1996.
Comparative Studies on Literature and History of Thailand and Myanmar.
Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 1997.
Esche, Annemarie. “Myanmar Prose Writing: Traditions and Innovation in the
20th Century.” In Traditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Con-
ference on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995,
Yangon. Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1996.
Hla Pe. Burmese Proverbs. London: John Murray, 1962.
Khin Ma Kyu. Les Femmes de Lettres Birmanes. Paris: Harmattan, 1994.
Khin Myo Chit. A Wonderland of Pagoda Legends. Illustrated by Paw Oo Thet.
Rangoon: U Hla Htay, 1996.
Khin Than, U. Twelve Tales. Rangoon: Nu Yin Press & Publishing House, 1995.
Kyaw Maung Maung Nyunt. Careless Talk and Other Memories of a Myanmar
Village. Rangoon: Thwe Thwe Than Publishing House, 2000.
Ma Ma Lay. Not Out of Hate. Translated by Maureen Aung-Thwin. Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1991.
Minamida, Midori. “Between Fact and Fiction: Thein Pe Myint’s Two Long
Novels in the 1960s.” Bulletin of Asian Studies: Osaka University of Foreign
Studies (Ajia Gaku Ronso) III (1993): 71–118.
Saw Tun, U. “The Development of Political Themes in Min-Thuwun’s Poetry.”
The Journal of Burma Studies 1 (1997): 107–24.
Silverstein, Josef. “Burma Through the Prism of Western Novels (Review Ar-
ticle).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16 (March 1985): 129–40.
Webb, G. H. “Kipling’s Burma: A Literary and Historical Review.” Asian Af-
fairs 15 (June 1984): 163–78.
Zaw Gyi and Alan Nichols, eds. The Words Cry Out: New Writing by Burmese
in Exile. Potts Point: Australia-Burma Support Group, 1995.

2. Architecture, Plastic, and Visual Arts

“Ancient Arakan.” Arts of Asia 17 (March/April 1987): 96–109.
Ancient Buddhist Art from Burma. Singapore: Taisei Gallery, 1993.
Archaeological Department, Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. Picto-
rial Guide to Pagan. Rangoon: Ministry of Culture, 1979.
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Broman, Barry. “Relics of the Raj: Colonial Architecture in Myanmar.” Arts of

Asia 27 (November–December 1997): 88–97.
Ciochon, Russell L., and Jamie James. “The Power of Pagan.” Archaeology 45
(September/October 1992): 34–41.
Di Crocco, Virginia M. “Early Burmese Ceramics from Sriksheta and Pagan
and the Problem of the Identification of the Piao Kingdom of the Chinese
Chronicles.” In Southeast Asian Archaeology 1990. Edited by Tam Glover.
Hull, England: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull, 1992.
———. “Silver Coins: Evidence for Mining at Bawzaing in the Shan State Circa
6th–8th Century A.D.” Journal of the Siam Society 80, no. 2 (1992): 125–28.
Dove, Victor. “Two Capitals of Burma: Pagan and Mandalay.” Arts of Asia 17
(May/June 1987): 135–40; 17 (July/August 1987): 136–39.
Dumarçay, Jacques. “The Palaces of Burma.” In The Palaces of South-East
Asia: Architecture and Customs. Translated by Michael Smithies. Singapore:
OUP, 1991.
Falconer, John, et al. Myanmar Style: Art, Architecture and Design of Burma.
Hong Kong: Periplus Editions, 1998.
Fraser-Lu, Sylvia. “Ancient Arakan.” Arts of Asia 17 (March/April 1987):
96–109.
———. Burmese Crafts Past and Present. Gartmore, Stirling: Kiscadale, 1992.
———. “Frog Drums and Their Importance in Karen Culture.” Arts of Asia 13
(September–October 1983): 50–63.
———. “Kalagas: Burmese Wall Hangings and Related Embroideries.” Arts of
Asia 12 (July–August 1982): 73–82.
———. “Sadaik–Burmese Manuscript Chests.” Arts of Asia 14 (May–June
1984): 68–74.
Gatellier, Marie. “Le Temple Shitthaung ‘a Myohaung Depositaire Des Tradi-
tions de L’Arakan.” Arts Asiatiques xlvii (1993): 110–26.
———. “Les images du Temple Phaung Daw U sur le lac Inlé en Union de
Myanmar (Birmanie).” In Péninsule Indochinoise (collectif). Notes sur la Re-
ligion et la Culture dans la Péninsule Indochinoise. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.
Green, Alexandra, and T. Richard Blurton. Burma: Art and Archaeology. Lon-
don: The British Museum, 2002.
Hasson, Haskia. Ancient Buddhist Art from Burma. Bangkok: White Lotus,
1993.
Hein, Don. “Ceramic Production in Myanmar—Further Evidence on Old Tra-
ditions.” In Traditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Confer-
ence on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yan-
gon. Rangoon: The Universities Press, 1996.
Herbert, Patricia. The Art of the Painted Books in Burma. Edinburgh: Kiscadale
Publications, 1991.
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528 • BIBLIOGRAPHY

Howard, Michael C. Textiles of the Hill Tribes of Burma. Bangkok: White Lo-
tus, 1999.
Isaacs, Ralph, and Richard T. Blurton. Visions from the Golden Land: Burma
and the Art of Lacquer. London: British Museum, 2000.
Karow, Otto. Burmese Buddhist Sculpture: The Johan Moger Collection.
Bangkok: White Lotus, 1991.
Le Bonheur, Albert. “Bronze Burmese Buddha Acquired by the Musée Guimet,
Paris.” Arts Asiatiques 45 (1990): 126–27.
Lefferts, H. Leedom Jr. “Contemporary Burmese Earthenware.” Crossroads 4,
no. 1 (Fall 1988): 121–27.
Lubeigt, Guy. Shwe-Gyi-Htô, l’art de la Tapisserie Brodée en Birmanie. Paris:
Ed. Kailash, in press.
———. “Vernacular Architecture of Some Ethnic Minorities in Burma (Shan,
Môn, Kachin, Yakaing, Chin).” In Encyclopaedia of Vernacular World Ar-
chitecture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Mitchiner, Michael. “The Date of the Early Funanese, Mon, Pyu, and
Arakanese Coinages (‘Symbolic Coins’).” Journal of the Siam Society 70
(1982): 5–12.
Moilanen, Irene. “Last of the Great Masters? Woodcarving Traditions in Myan-
mar, Past and Present (Buddhism).” Ph.D. Dissertation, Jyvaskylan
Yliopisto, Finland, 1995.
Moilanen, Irene, and Sergey S. Ozhegov. Mirrored in Wood: Burmese Art and
Architecture. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999.
Moore, Elizabeth H. “Contemporary Paintings in Burma.” Arts of Asia 22
(September/October 1992): 150–53.
———. “Monasteries of Mandalay: Variation in Architecture and Patronage.” In
Traditions in Current Perspective: Proceedings of the Conference on Myan-
mar and Southeast Asian Studies 15–17 November 1995, Yangon. Rangoon:
The Universities Press, 1996.
Moore, Elizabeth, and San San Maw. “Flights of Fancy, Hintha and Kinnaya,
the Avian Inspiration in Myanmar Art.” Oriental Art 41, no. 2 (1995): 25–31.
Moore, Elizabeth H., Hansjorg Meyer, and U Win Pe. Shwedagon: Golden
Pagoda of Myanmar. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999.
Pichard, Pierre. Inventory of Monuments at Pagan. Gartmore, Scotland:
Kiscadale Publications, 1992.
———. The Pentagonal Monuments of Pagan. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1991.
———. “Sous Les Voûtes De Pagan.” Arts Asiatiques xlvii (1993): 86–109.
Reith, Charlotte. “Comparison of Three Pottery Villages in Shan State, Burma.”
The Journal of Burma Studies 1 (1997): 45–82.
Shwe Mann Maung. “The Largest Alloy Buddha Image.” Myanmar Perspec-
tives 2 (April 1997): 82–83.
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Singer, Noel F. Old Rangoon, City of the Shwedagon. Gartmore, Scotland:

Kiscadale Publications, 1995.
———. “Palm Leaf Manuscripts of Myanmar, Burma.” Arts of Asia 21 (January/
February 1991): 133–40.
Stadtner, Donald M. “An ‘Extraordinary Folly’?” Archaeology 53, no. 3
(May/June 2000): 54–59.
———. “A Fifteenth-Century Royal Monument in Burma and the Seven Sta-
tions in Buddhist Art.” Art Bulletin 73 (March 1991): 39–52.
Than Tun, Dr. “A Bagan Temple’s Main Gate: Is There any Significance When
It Opens in Any Other Direction Except East?” Myanmar Historical Journal
Research 2 (June 1998): 106–8.
Thanegi, M. “Traditional Myanmar Pottery.” Arts of Asia 27, no. 1 (Janu-
ary–February 1997): 66–70.

3. Performing Arts
Diamond, Catherine. “Burmese Nights: The Pagoda Festival Pwe in the Age of
Hollywood’s ‘Titanic’.” New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 3 (August 2000):
227–48.
Khin Mya Kyu. “The Music of Myanmar.” Unesco Courier 45 (March 1992):
48–49.
Maung Sein Tun. Best of the Best Jokes of Zar Ga Na. Long Beach, Calif.:
Maung Sein Tun, n.d.
Thanegi, Ma. The Illusion of Life: Burmese Marionettes. Bangkok: White Or-
chid, 1994.
White Elephants and Golden Ducks: Enchanting Musical Treasures from
Burma. San Francisco: Ko Ko Lay, n.d.
Win Pe. “The Myanmar Female Solo Dance.” Myanmar Perspectives II (April
1997): 41–42.
———. “Myanmar Pure Dance.” Myanmar Perspectives II (June 1997): 30–32.
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06-205 (10) Author.qxd 7/13/06 7:54 AM Page 531

About the Author

Donald M. Seekins was born in New York. He obtained his B.A. in

Asian studies at Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political
science from the University of Chicago. He is currently professor of
Southeast Asian Studies in the College of International Studies at Meio
University in Okinawa, Japan. Prior to joining Meio University, he was
professor of political science in the Department of Law and Political
Science at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, and re-
search professor in the Foreign Area Studies Department of The Amer-
ican University in Washington, D.C. In 1988–1989, he was a Fulbright
Visiting Lecturer at the University of the Ryukyus and in 1995 was a
guest professor in the College of Letters and Social Sciences of the Uni-
versity of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Long interested in Burma,
he first visited the country in 1970, during the height of Ne Win social-
ism, and has frequently returned to do fieldwork after 1988. He is
presently working on a monograph about social, economic, and cultural
changes in the city of Rangoon during the post-1988 period.

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